Rita Wilson reflects on cancer battle and her mother's death as she reveals deeply personal meaning behind her song ‘Whose Body Is This?’
Rita Wilson has opened up about the emotional meaning behind her song ‘Whose Body Is This?’, as she reflected on womanhood, ageing, and finding her voice in her 50s.
The acclaimed actress and producer, who turned 70 this month, spoke to Tyla about her latest album, Sound of a Woman, and the unexpected journey she’s been on as a singer-songwriter.
While Wilson is no stranger to fame, having starred in movies like Sleepless in Seattle and produced huge hits like Mamma Mia!, stepping into the spotlight to tell her own story has been an entirely different experience.
Released in May, the record is a poignant exploration of the many different phases and identities a woman carries through life.
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One of the most raw tracks is, without a doubt, ‘Whose Body Is This?,’ with Wilson drawing on her relationship with her body and how it has changed over the years, through pregnancy and breast cancer, including the grief she felt after her bilateral mastectomy.
The singer, who is married to actor Tom Hanks, told Tyla: “This song could probably have 10 verses in it. As a teenager, you have a complex relationship with your body. I remember looking back at pictures of myself in really great shape and thinking, ‘Why didn’t I know that then? Why did I think it wasn’t enough? Why did I think I needed to do something different?’”
She continued: “And then, as you get older and you start to have enormous respect for what your body can do, just physically, just everything a female body goes through. From having your period to having a baby to healing after miscarriage to then having an illness, in my case, breast cancer with bilateral mastectomy, and the grief that comes along with losing these body parts that nurtured your children and fed them.”
Wilson added: “You relate it to the relationship you had to your breasts through your sexuality, your sensuality, your femininity, and what happens when that goes, and also this enormous gratitude and amazement for what your body will do to heal you and to keep you whole, and keep you going.”
"We don't talk about things that are very vulnerable conversations"
The singer also opened up about the bittersweet lesson her mother Dorothea Tzigkou taught her when she was nearing the end of her life, following a battle with Alzheimer’s disease.
Revealing how it impacted the themes of the album, Wilson told Tyla: “In my mom’s case, she had Alzheimers and lost her ability to remember.
“I remember our family priest came over when she was passing away and not speaking anymore. And her body was still hanging on, you know. And I remember asking him, why?
“The whole family happened to be there that day, and he just happened to stop by.”
She explained that the family didn’t know the priest was coming, and said to him with a bit of edge: "Why is God keeping her here? Why doesn’t he take her, why?"
Wilson continued: “And he said, without hesitation, ‘Well, she’s still teaching you’. And that was so beautiful to me, because he said, ‘Look, you’re all here. She’s bringing you together. She’s teaching you. This is what you do. This is what you have; that’s coming in your future. This is what you’re telling your children, how you show up for them, and how they’ll show up for you’.
“That was just magnificent to me, so it’s very complex, and we don’t talk about that enough. We don’t talk about those things that are very vulnerable conversations.”
"I love that feeling of being a bit unfiltered"
Wilson is confident that her 50s were the ‘perfect’ time to enter the world of music, because you ‘really come into your own, particularly if you’ve had children and raised them’.
She told Tyla: “At that age, they’re kind of on their own, and you’re out there in the world, and you start asking yourself what it is that you want and what it is that you want to say and how you want to live your life, and you’re looking at the future.
“You start really focusing on those things where your energies have been sort of used elsewhere up until that point - there’s a diffusion of energy.”
She also opened up on the emotional songwriting process, admitting that while it was ‘easier’ in the sense that she ‘don't care what anybody thinks,’ it was ‘more difficult because it was more truthful’.
She told Tyla: “I love that feeling of being a bit unfiltered and saying what you really mean because you realise you don’t have anything to lose.
“When you’re younger, there’s so much at stake, and when you’re older, like, I don’t care! It’s fantastic. It’s much more liberating.”
The singer explained: “If you start at the beginning of the album with the song ‘Michaelangelo’, there was a quote that I used to have on my bulletin board from that sculptor, and someone asked him, ‘How do you create these gorgeous sculptures out of these massive chunks of marble?’ He said, ‘I see the angel in the marble, and I carve until I set him free’.
“And for me that was really the experience that I felt I was having as a woman. I had this vision of myself and my voice and my identity and who I was, and it’s taken years to chip away at all of that extraneous, nonessential parts of myself to get to where I am now so that I could write this album and sing these songs.”
Rita Wilson's Sound of a Woman tour will come to London, Glasgow and Dublin in November. Tickets are on sale now at www.ritawilson.com
Topics: Celebrity, Entertainment, Music, Tyla Exclusive, Women's Health
Madison Burgess
