Brandy: on her new movie, growing pains and dating in the spotlight

Ebony, August, 1998 by Lynn Norment

On Her New Movie, Growing Pains and Dating In The Spotlight

LIKE her teen-star friends Usher and Mase, Brandy is a supertalented, successful recording artist, and like Tia and Tamera Mowry, she has made a name for herself on television. Like athletic wizards Tiger and Kobe, she is on a first-name basis with her enormous public. But Brandy, at age 19, has something that neither of these young talents has to date: a shot at making it big-time in Hollywood.

Brandy perhaps is best known as the star of UPN's top-rated show Moesha. In addition, she is back on the music charts with a sizzling new recording, Never Say Never, the follow-up to her 1004 quad-platinum debut, Brandy. Last December she headed a superstar cast in ABC-Disney's Cinderella, which attracted 60 million viewers. This summer Brandy is filming I Still Know, the sequel to last year's hit teen thriller, I Know What You Did Last Summer.

She is a busy, busy young woman. Though her life is filled with travel, wardrobe decisions and the constant glare of cameras, she strives fin' the near impossible dream of being a regular teen. She has grown up in the public spotlight, having been cast on the sitcom Thea when she was 12, then releasing her first album when she was 15, with the success of Moesha following. When she accompanied then-NBA hopeful Kobe Bryant to his 1996 high school prom, it made headlines, as did her romance with Wanya Morris of Boyz II Men.

"I think I know a lot more about life than the average teen because being in this business, you grow up last," says Brandy, sitting by the bedroom window in her family's Los Angeles home. "In real life I would be working three jobs. I meet with adults every day. I have to be in a grown-up mind frame, and then again, still be young. The weird thing is maybe the average 19-year-old knows more about living than I do. I know less about going to the prom, going to high school, going to school functions, just knowing what's happening. If I don't listen to radio, I don't know who's hot. If someone comes to visit me, I wouldn't know where to take them."

Despite the disadvantage of not having a "normal teen life," Brandy is happy and ready to take on exciting new challenges. Though mature beyond her years, she exudes an innocence, a little-girl charm. Her parents and "heroes," Mississippi natives Willie Ray and Sonja Norwood, are also coaches and managers for her and younger brother Ray J., a recording artist and actor himself.

Observing her interactions with friends and family, it is clear that Brandy now makes her own decisions. It was her decision, she says, to end her romance with Wanya because their busy careers and living so far apart made it difficult to maintain a relationship. "He was my first boyfriend," she says in a delicate voice tinged with melancholy. "Yes, I am sad about it, but it's okay though."

She says she met Wanya when she was touring with the successful Boyz II Men quartet in 1995. They became good friends and later talked via telephone every day. "For so long I was his best friend. I was like his little sister," says Brandy. "We finally got together when I was of age [18] ... My Mom had told him, `No, don't you even try it.' I don't think he liked me when I was a young girl. But I, like, grew up right in front of him. I grew up in his eyes."

She says she's heartbroken by the breakup. "I've gone through that, you know, breaking up with him, my first love. I was really heartbroken," she says in a small, sad voice, her luminous eyes a bit misty. "I was sick, and it was hard, really hard, but I got through it. I'm okay now. I miss him, but I'm okay ... He's here always," she says, placing her slender, well-manicured hand over her heart. "He's special to me. But we had to move on ... Whoever he ends up with will be happy."

Brandy says she and L.A. Lakers Kobe Bryant are good friends who met after an awards show when they both were high school seniors. Kobe asked her to be his prom date, and she accepted because "he's a great guy," but also because she did not attend a high school and have a prom herself. She says suggestions that she went to the prom with Kobe for a career move "definitely" are not true.

"When I met him I was like, `Oh, my God, you're cute,'" says Brandy. "The prom was so much fun. But we had talked every day before the prom so we could get to know each other. I was like, `I'm not going to go to a prom with some guy I don't know.' He just seemed like a really, really nice person. So I asked my mom, and his mom talked with my mom. But so much has changed since then. He's like Kobe Bryant now. I'm so proud of him."

While most teens take dating for granted, it is not so simple for Brandy. Even in the mall where she hangs out frequently, she is confronted with the dilemma of whether a guy is attracted to her because she is Brandy, the star. "It's kind of weird to balance it out," she says, adding that she likes guys who are "stable" and who know what they want in life, a guy who is a gentleman. "I like affection. I just like a gentle person, a gentleman who likes to open doors," she says. "I like flowers. I'm young, but I'm old-fashioned. I like a person to stand up for what he wants and for himself. Don't let me run over you."