Rihanna has revealed that her surprise pregnancy reveal at this year’s Super Bowl Halftime Show was not planned in a new interview.
The singer was in Los Angeles for the launch party of her new Fenty x Puma Creeper Phatty sneaker, when she spoke to Access Hollywood about her performance at the 2023 Super Bowl Halftime Show and motherhood.
When asked about revealing her pregnancy during the performance, she admitted that she did not intend to do so. “Here’s the thing,” she said, sheepishly. “I did what I had to do, right? My jumper couldn’t zip up! No one knew I was pregnant, I just told myself, ‘Just make sure it’s stretchy.’”
She continued: “So the underarm, it was stretchy, and [the bottom of the jumper] was baggy, but you know, the zip! It just stopped right there! So it had to be what it had to be.”
Watch the interview with Rihanna below:
Rihanna also reflected on her Super Bowl performance, calling it an “out-of-body experience”: “I feel like every rehearsal was the Super Bowl, and at the Super Bowl it was like, ‘What’s happening?’” She also gave credit to her production team, whose work earned her Super Bowl performance a Primetime Emmy nomination this year.
Elsewhere in the interview, she opened up about her relationship with A$AP Rocky, expressing that she gained a new admiration for her “best friend” as a romantic partner. “I loved him differently as a dad,” she said. “This is major, major like– it’s a turn on. What a leader, what a great, patient, loving… and my kids are obsessed with him. I’m just a background, like, I’m an extra.”
Earlier, she also admitted that she never expected to raise a nurturing family, stating: “I hoped that I could have kids one day, and I hoped I could have them in love, and I hoped that I can be a part of a family that you know, breaks generational curses and just like, moves forward and does new things, and raises our kids better than we’ve been raised, and all the beautiful things, and it’s happening, and I can’t believe it.”
In a different interview from the same night, she also teased releasing new music and a potential world tour, stating: “I feel like it’s only fair that my fans get what they’ve been waiting on, which is new music. After that, let’s just like, blow everything up.”
Rihanna’s Super Bowl Halftime Show saw her perform highlights from her discography – including ‘Bitch Better Have My Money’, ‘Only Girl (In The World)’, ‘Umbrella’, and more – in a 13-minute performance which involved choreography and performing on a platform suspended above the field. In May, the performance became the most-watched Super Bowl Halftime Show of all time, having raked in over 121million views at the time.