Vanessa Williams

I had done some photos with him that there was no release, never supposed to be seen with anybody.

Anyway, he had been working and trying to sell these photos as soon as I became famous behind the scenes for as soon as I became famous.

Ended up selling to this magazine.

They wanted, so the pageant said, you know, you were going to, you're going to lose your title in a particular amount of time.

And I, at that point said, you know, people, and then people were saying, fight for the title.

You've done everything you, you've been fine, Miss America, blah, blah, blah.

And again, I'm working on it.

I've got a documentary coming out on this.

So again, I hate to bastardize and make this tiny.

But anyway, I resigned.

So yes, I resigned toward the end of my reign.

And so it was not only...

Not only was I labeled as a beauty queen, which negated talent and intellect, but a scandalized beauty queen.

So to start my career, which I wanted to be on Broadway, with that heavy baggage was a massive burden.

And it took me...

More than a massive burden.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It took me 10 years to get on Broadway to be... And through that, I became a recording artist and did television and films, but battled my way through...

I mean, I should have named the book, oh, I didn't know she could do that because it was always like, oh, I didn't know she could do that.

And it was like constantly breaking down assumptions and judgment, which makes you tough, makes you hard, and it's taken a while for me to kind of soften to be back to who I was before I became famous.