Vanessa Williams Opens Up About the Brutal Fallout After Her 1983 Miss America Scandal
Singer and “Ugly Betty” actress Vanessa Williams is letting folks in on a dark chapter in her life after her 1983 Miss America scandal. And what she has to say just might shock you.
As we previously reported, Williams made history decades ago as the first Black woman to win the Miss America crown. However, she was soon forced by pageant officials to resign after Penthouse magazine published unauthorized nude photos—images she had taken under the promise of anonymity. And while the executive chairman of the Miss America pageant issued a public apology to Williams onstage in 2016, Williams recently reflected on how that moment affected her and her family.
Sitting down for a new interview on this week’s episode of Sony Music Entertainment’s “Dinner’s On Me Podcast,” hosted by Jesse Tyler Ferguson, the “Soul Food” star shared that the moment led to her experiencing death threats for the first time in her life.
“There were death threats. My parents had a folder, like a box that they would put [it] all [in]. Because back then there was no email. Letters would be sent to my house threatening to kill me. People would call my parents’ number ’cause it was listed in the phone book back in the day. So my parents had to deal with so much more than what I had to,” she explained.
She later explained how the scandal also led to her getting blacklisted from the entertainment industry, specifically citing an incident where she nailed an audition for a Broadway play, but was shunned from starring in it due to what happened.
“My first real Broadway audition was Tommy Tune wanted me to come in and replace Twiggy. ‘My One and Only.’ So I learned the tap, learned all the, yeah. Mike Nichols was the director. Met with Mike. Came in, did the audition, and he told me this story back in 2008 when we were at the opening of ‘West Side Story,’” Williams said.
She continued: “He says, ‘Did I ever tell you that story?’ I finish my audition, I walk back and say, ‘Hi’ to Mike, and he goes to Lee Gershwin, who’s Ira Gershwin’s widow and owner of the whole estate. [He goes] ‘Wasn’t she terrific?’ [Then] He goes backstage, goes downstairs. The phone rings, and it’s her [Ira] saying, ‘Over my dead body will that whore be in my show.’”
Williams concluded by saying that although she wasn’t privy to that conversation, she had a gut feeling that she wouldn’t get the part but was still unaware of just how severe the judgment was of her over the incident.
While she was a student at Syracuse, an acquaintance had convinced Williams to enter the Miss Greater Syracuse pageant. She won the title and went on to become Miss New York in 1983. Williams made history on September 17, 1983, when she became the first Black woman to win the Miss America pageant.
Ten months after she was crowned Miss America, she gave up her title in a July 23, 1984, after she said she met with a photographer who said her nude photos would not be publicized .n an interview with Anderson Cooper.
Then-Miss New Jersey Suzette Charles, who was the pageant runner-up, replaced Williams after she stepped down. The Temple University student became the second Black woman to wear the crown.
