Vanessa Williams on Her Iconic Roles: Ugly Betty, Shaft, and Desperate Housewives

Aug 14, 2023

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"I love bringing characters to life that you assume are one thing and show their vulnerability."

Welcome to Look Back At It, a monthly column where some of the most iconic Black actresses in Hollywood reminisce and reflect on the roles that made them stars. For this month's installment, Vanessa Williams breaks down her career—from Ugly Betty and Soul Food to her current stint as a judge on Paramount+'s drag queen competition show Queen of the Universe.

The term "multi-hyphenate" must have been created with Vanessa Williams in mind.

Over the years, there have been very few performers who’ve oscillated between film, television, and theater as effortlessly as she has. And she began her career by making history. In 1984, she became the first Black woman to be crowned Miss America. Four years later, she broadened her reach and released her debut solo album, The Right Stuff. (As of now, she's been nominated for 11 Grammys). But it's her acting career—which began in the ’80s—that she might be most recognized for.

Her performance as the ambitious and cunning Wilhelmina Slater in Ugly Betty earned her three Primetime Emmy nominations while the role of the Witch in the Broadway revival of Into the Woods brought Tony recognition. Desperate Housewives, Soul Food, Johnson Family Vacation, and The Trip to Bountiful are just a few of her other most notable projects.

Now, she's playing the role of herself in Queen of the Universe, a drag queen singing competition show on Paramount+.

Below, Williams takes us through her most iconic roles to share her fondest memories from the screen—acting with the late Cecily Tyson, filming Hannah Montana: The Movie for her daughter, and smoking cigars with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"I did Eraser with, of course, the larger-than-life Arnold Schwarzenegger. We filmed it in 1995 and a little bit in 1996. At the time, I was friends with Maria Shriver who suggested to Arnold that they should have me come in to read for the role. They were looking for a diverse duo and Whitney [Houston] had just finished doing The Bodyguard with Kevin Costner. Maria told Arnold that it was time for him to diversify his leading ladies. But the director and producer didn't want me, so I flew myself out and had a one-on-one with Arnold and we bonded immediately. We talked about our similarities. People judged him when he was Mr. Universe and just thought he was a bodybuilder with a beautiful face. And I was judged as Miss America back when I was 20 years old for being seen as a beauty queen. So that bonded both of us and I ended up singing the theme song for the movie, which was wonderful. And it was fun to be on the red carpet smoking a cigar in honor of Arnold, who showed me how to smoke."

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"We shot Soul Food in Chicago and it was freezing. I wore a wig that I hated so much that at the end of the shoot, I set it on fire. I’ve got a Polaroid of it somewhere. But this was an opportunity to work with George Tillman Jr., who was a young director. At the time, Kenny ‘Babyface’ Edmonds and his wife Tracey were a producing duo and this was one of their projects. They asked me to join and when they gave me the script, they thought that I would like to play the mother. But after I read it, I said, ‘No, no, no. I want to do Terry. She's the one.’ It was a wonderful opportunity to create a role that had surprises on the page. I love bringing characters to life that you assume are one thing and show their vulnerability. That's what I love to tap into when I approach a role. And this movie has one of the most iconic kitchen scenes. I wanted to show her breaking point. That's when I got a chance to really let go. And I love when I get DMs of people recreating that scene."

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"Shaft was done at the very beginning of my pregnancy with Sasha, who is 23 years old right now. So I had to play this tough badass and had to do my own stunts. The scariest moment was probably when I get shot and have to be propelled back into a pile of garbage knowing that I was with child. So Shaft was always kind of a strange period of time for me. I had just gotten married for the second time, I was pregnant, and it was my first time working with Sam Jackson on a tough schedule. We were in New York and shot at nighttime. We were all over the place—Manhattan, Washington Heights, and Brooklyn—so it was a tough shoot."

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"Johnson Family Vacation was pure joy. Cedric [The Entertainer] is a clown in the best way. I love him so much. I got to work with Solange before her career blew up, and Lil’ Bow Wow when he was still Lil’. It was just a blast to work on and was so much fun coming to the set every day."

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"The Ugly Betty cast is family. These are people that I talk to all the time. We love each other. And the dynamic of this particular cast was deep. These were not just beautiful people put together to do what's on the page. Everyone was well-trained and smart as hell. We could throw each other anything and it was like an improv ensemble. That's what made our dynamic so real. People could see the love. People could feel the humor. We trusted each other so much with our humanity and with our talent. And that's not normally the usual dynamic. Normally you show up on set and someone's got an ego that you’re tolerating to get through the day. Ugly Betty was a jewel."

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"I did Hannah Montana for Sasha. She was obsessed with Miley [Cyrus] and the Jonas Brothers. We would go to all the big Disney premieres like High School Musical and we went to all the concerts. At the time, my management was managing Miley, too, and I told them that I had to be in the movie for Sasha's sake, so I played Hannah Montana's publicist and Sasha got a chance to come to Nashville and Malibu, where we shot. So she got a lot of Miley time on this movie."

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"I had just finished doing Ugly Betty. We had gotten our notice that we were being canceled in 2010 and I went from our final season into a show called Sondheim on Sondheim for the Roundabout Theater at Studio 54. Marc Cherry, who was the executive producer and creator of Desperate Housewives, came to see it. He's a huge Sondheim fan, so much so that he names every episode after a Sondheim song. So he came to see me and loved my work. And then I got a phone call saying, ‘Would you like to join our cast?’ So I ended up joining for the last two years of the series as Renee. She was an ex-athlete's wife and a pain in the ass with a big personality. Marc gave me a lot of great lines. She was definitely the comic relief out of the Wisteria Lane gals. It was fun."

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"The Trip to Bountiful hadn't been done on Broadway for 50 years. The first time was with a white cast and this was the first time with an all-Black cast. Cuba Gooding Jr. played Ludie and Cicely Tyson played Mrs. Watts. It was an amazing opportunity to work with such a legend. It was the first time that she had been on stage in years, so it was her ‘welcome back’ to the Broadway stage. It was incredible working with her. It was a masterclass to watch her performance every night. And at that time, we really didn't know how old she was. We thought she was in her late seventies and she was 85 at the start. We did it on Broadway and then we did the TV movie version of it, so she lived with that role for a few years and never missed a show.

"My favorite moment was after we would do our bows. I would get on one side and hook her arm and Cuba would get on the other side and we’d lift her up and her feet would pedal in the wind. We’d run down in the wings and she’d look at us and say, ‘Ooh, that was a good one. Did you hear that audience?’ That kind of excitement and dedication to being good and pleasing the audience is something that I’ll never forget."

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"On Queen of the Universe, I play myself as a judge. It's a drag queen singing competition. There's no lip-syncing here. Last season was spectacular. These are queens from all over the world. This year, we have queens from Italy, the Netherlands, Mexico, the United States, and Australia. Those are just a few of this year's highlights. The production value is incredible this season. We have pyrotechnics and we have fireworks. They definitely have amped up the production value. And there are always stories behind the queens and behind their triumphs It's such a pleasure."

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Juliana Ukiomogbe is the Assistant Editor at ELLE. Her work has previously appeared in Interview, i-D, Teen Vogue, Nylon, and more.

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