Check Fergie´s interview on Allure magazine!
- Behold the Dutchess -

For pop star Fergie, life is good. A platinum album, movie deals, and a makeup contract. But there was a time when she could hardly leave the house, let alone imagine being a celebrity.

At the aptly named Luxe Hotel in Bel-air, Stacy Ann Ferguson, a.k.a. Fergie, is breaking into people’s rooms. OK, not really. What’s happening is that the manager keeps sending us to rooms that turn out to be already occupied. I vote for rifling through people’s luggage;Fergie won’t let me. Is it possible the woman who, as the lead singer of the Black Eyed Peas , bumped-and-ground her way through “My Humps,” would stand on ceremony?
Well, yea. Go figure.
And that’s the thing about Fergie: She fools you. No one would have guessed that this teeny,suburban white chick would become a huge hip-hop/R&B/whatever-the-hell-she-is star—a woman who is startling the music industry with the success of her solo album. Because at a time when listeners are cherry-picking their favorite tunes instead of buying Cd's , Ferguson’s debut The Dutchess, has three number-one hits, making her the first female recording artist to achieve this benchmark since Christina Aguilera performed the same feat in 2000.
It seems impossible that the diminutive bombshell who sings about how she “makes them boys go loco” wouldn’t be a kittenish diva, particularly on a day like today, when she’s feeling lousy. (“Excuse me, my cold,” she honks, as she blows her nose for the twentieth time.) Yet there’s a formality to her, and a desire to please. (two years ago she was late for a concert, and didn’t want to disappoint fans by being even more tardy, so she urinated in her pants on the way to the stage. “I just did not stop on the way to go the restroom. But yeah, I won’t live that down. It won’t happen again, though. Peeing is now one of my rituals before going on stage.”) It’s easy to understand her wild popularity among the edgy, fashion-forward young: she has a kind of self-generated pretty-power that incorporates great style, and a fantastically toned body (“I use to do Abs for Dummies”), and robust sexuality with the kind of Haratio Alger, rags-to-riches approach to looks that girls can relate to. The subtext is: “I may not be 100 percent, God-given flawless like Angelina, but I’m working every angle.” If Fergie were a doll she wouldn’t be a Barbie. She’d be a Bratz.
So it’s not surprising that M.A.C. cosmetics, which embraces the outre icons(Pamela Anderson, Dita Von Teese, RuPaul), has signed Fergie for 2008. “ My mom and I use to talk about that when I was a little girl—wouldn’t it be great to have a makeup campaign? It’s so far-fetched, but you can still have hope.”
This is a bit disingenuous, since Fergie has never had to struggle much for work. (Her sanity, maybe; work, no) And she always knew what she wanted. “When I was six or seven, my mom use to take me to musicals. I would sit in the audience, and I wanted to be onstage. My mother saw me standing in front of the mirror singing Annie, and she asked me if that was the job I wanted—to be a singer. I told her that’s what I wanted to do. This was a no-brainer for me.” By the time Fergie was nine years old, she was already starring on a TV show called Kids Incorporated, about a bunch of children and teens who performed in their own rock group (fellow KI alum: Jennifer Love Hewitt). Once she aged out of the show at 14 years old, she spent a few years getting bit parts on TV- she was the voice of Sally in several Charlie Brown specials.
Even as a teenager she was hard to peg, socially and musically. An “A” student at Wilson High School, Ferguson had her study buddies, and then her friends with whom she’d go to the underage clubs. Also, gangsta rap was happening in Compton, about 35 miles from Hacienda Heights, California, where Fergie grew up. “One day I’d listen to ‘Lighter Shade of Brown,’ and another day, I’d be listening to the Steven Miller Band,” she says. “It’s just that I had a wide range of musical and social tastes. I’ve never really been easy to categorize.
“I was that suburban girl who was fascinated by things going on 40 minutes from my house,” she recalls. “And of course, it’s always fascinating if you’re not involved in the heartache and heart of it all. For me, it was listening to those lyrics. It felt naughty and rebellious and wonderful as a teenager.”
Eventually, though, the posturing became reality, In 1994 she formed Wild Orchid ( which included KI costar Renee Sandstrom), a kind of sexy Spice Girls- wannabe band, which enjoyed moderate success and broke up in 2001. The 26-year-old Fergie decided to commemorate her disappointment by taking a long vacation from reality.
Her drug of choice was crystal meth. She spent her evenings going to clubs, getting high, and trying to avoid the FBI and CIA-which she was convinced were following her. “ I had chemically induced paranoid schizophrenia,” she says. “At one point I gave myself an ultimatum, because I was absolutely sure the FBI and a SWAT team were coming for me. I said ‘OK, if you walk through that door and they’re not out there, then it’s the drugs.” After a couple of years, she realized her choice was sobriety or a mental institution. So she went through therapy, attending Narcotics Anonymous meetings, and got a grip.
But those years of living chemically, Fergie says, have given her an insight into today’s Hollywood girls-gone-wild that most of us could never have. She cut off everything and everyone (mom, friends) who didn’t play a part in her drug life. But for her, recovering from drug addiction was successful because she did not have cameras recording her every slip. “The thing that appalls me is when you get these stories from inside rehab… that’s supose to be your sanctuary,” Fergie says. “People are selling their stories, And I know we live in a voyeuristic world right now, but-how are you supposed to get better when people are constantly leaking stories about you when your in rehab? It’s just not conducive to hearing.”
Joining the Black Eyed Peas in 2002 was healing, and the combination of founder will.i.am’s infectious music and Fergie’s killer performance as the lead singer catapulted the quirky hip-hop group to mainstream super-stardom.
And her appeal to her huge young female fan base? She is a style revolutionary who seems to embody the idea: “Fashion is all about eventually becoming naked.” And she never looks quite the same twice: She can look as she did at a fashion rocks concert in September, singing “Glamorous”—like an art-deco pinup from the ‘40s; then again, she can… well, let’s just say Fergie is a member of the “frequent offenders” list on the website gofugyourself.com.
“I’ve always been a risk-taker,” she explains. “I’ve never had a problem with doing something first, even if it might not look the best. Sometimes, I look back and say, ‘that was a horrible choice.’ But at the time, it felt good. So, oh, well. I would be too bored with life being safe all the time.” This is true for her beauty as well as her fashion choices. She was going to film a commercial on the day we met, but, she say, “ If I didn’t have to film today, I would have Sonya Dakar Omega-3 Repair Complex oil all over my face and look really shiny, ‘cause I like to soak up the moisture.”
But she is disciplined, too. That body does not come easily: She does some form of exercise daily—walking on a steep upgrade,sit-ups, push-ups, stomach crunches; she’s thinking of taking a course in pole dancing, which is “a really good workout” she says—and has a food delivery service, Diet Designs, that she eats almost exclusively when she’s working. (If she slips up, she says, the weight “goes right to my stomach.”) That kind of discipline has extended to her personal life. The line “I’m not promiscuous” is not just a convenient rhyme for “Fergalicious” in her eponymous tune; it’s really the way things were. “I’ve always been a big flirt, and I don’t have a problem wearing sexy clothes,” Fergie says. “But I was virgin throughout high school. It was important to me. I lost my virginity at 18, and stayed with the same guy for five years.”
Wait. The “My Humps” girl didn’t give it up until she was 18 years old? Fergie laughs. “Will wrote that song and did his own version of it to me,” she says. “It made me a little nervous… what I was saying was a little bit racy. But then I thought, You know what , this is gonna be fun!” and from then on, I didn’t take myself too serious. I think a lot of artists do, and that’s fine for them. But I just don’t. I know who I am when all the lights are off, and I’m in my room by myself. Of course I’m not a square. I’m a very sensual person, and I love being with one man. My man.”
That man is Las Vegas star Josh Duhamel, whose suntanned, boy-next-door face sits atop a slab of muscle that would make you drop by for sugar way too often if he really did live next door. He and Fergie met when she guest-starred on his show. He had said in an interview that he had a dream about her, and while on set Fergie asked him if “the dream was good.” He replied, “It was.”
They have been together for three years, and “he’s just as great as you’d imagine,” she says. Last Valentine’s Day, Fergie was on tour, and Duhamel flew out to see her. “While we were at dinner, he had the room lit with candles, and rose petals all over the bed,” she recalls. “We had champagne, chocolate covered strawberries, whipped cream. It was very romantic.”
Fergie’s eyes light up as she discusses life with Duhamel. “We like to watch movies and and order Indian food and swim with our Dachshunds. One of them acts like this great retriever in the pool.” Uh, any minute we’re getting to the glamorous part. “Josh designed our entire backyard. He put in a barbecue. It’s a big Viking-it’s great. And then a fire pit! He’s so good at it, you know?” Somehow one doesn’t want the image of the scheming Leo from All My Children wearing an apron saying “Kiss the Chef” to clutter the brain, but Fergie seems oblivious.
Marriage, children? She thinks so. But right now, there is the prospect of more endorsements, more movies—she had a small role in the Planet Terror part of the Grindhouse double feature, and is keen on expanding into romantic comedies. But even fun, for Fergie, has to have some higher purpose, for this is a very good girl. In September, Fergie sold her Hummer for $64,199.91 on eBay and gave the money to the environmental group Global Green USA; she’s looking forward to buying a new hybrid. “ I’m going to put my fancy rims on it, though,” she says with a grin.
A hybrid with fancy rims. Is it a car she’s talking about?