Beyoncé's Homecoming: The 4 Most Illuminating Moments - Vanity Fair

Beyoncé's Homecoming: The 4 Most Illuminating Moments - Vanity Fair

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Beyoncé's Homecoming: The 4 Most Illuminating Moments - Vanity Fair Posted: 17 Apr 2019 12:00 AM PDT Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé is a rare glimpse into the life of a superstar. The special, released by Netflix on Wednesday, is a deep dive into the performer's headlining Coachella set in 2018, a visionary display that made Beyoncé the first black woman to headline the mega-music festival. As its trailer, released a little over a week before the film's premiere, showed, Homecoming gives a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the rigorous show, interspersed with views of Queen Bey's personal life. From revelations about her difficult pregnancy to a series of nitty-gritty production details, here are a few of the most fascinating secrets contained within the thrilling movie that gives fans everything they wanted. The Origin of Beychella Homecoming was conceived as a tribute to historically black colleges and universities. At the start of the film, Beyoncé explains that she was inspired by her Houston upbringing, visiting Texas H.B.C.U.s like Prairie View A&M University, and rehearsing at Texas Southern University. "I always dreamed of going to an H.B.C.U.," she adds. Thanks to her bustling music career, though, she had to eschew that dream: "My college was Destiny's Child. My college was traveling around the world, and life was my teacher." The theme also held symbolic meaning; Beyoncé viewed the show as a return to her performance home: the stage. The Production Though the film doesn't give all the nuts and bolts away, Homecoming is a fairly thorough look at how Beychella came together. It took months to script the show, Beyoncé says at one point, to say nothing of the effort involved in getting its distinctive choreography and musical arrangements just right. The production process involved three cavernous soundstages, which Beyoncé would walk between—observing the band, the dancers, and the creative staff, respectively. There's ample footage of her lecturing her creative team about the tiniest details—including, but not limited to how to properly capture audio of the dancers in the bleachers. "Until I see some of my notes applied, it doesn't make sense for me to make more," the perfectionist says at one point—perfect fodder for certain YouTube compilations. The lecture ends on a personal note, when Bey reveals it's her and Jay-Z's anniversary. Beyoncé also says in the film that she, unsurprisingly, personally selected several elements of the show—including each dancer, the lights, the material used on the steps of the bleachers, and the height of the pyramid. The Personal Glimpse Throughout the film, there are a handful of thrilling glimpses at Bey and Jay-Z's children—Blue Ivy (who can frequently be seen dancing, adding to the fun Beyhive theory that Blue is the real dance captain on set), Rumi, and Sir—who were occasionally brought to the set of the production. And the singer also offers more than that. At one point, she opens up about having to skip Coachella in 2017, due to her pregnancy. While there have been rumors that she and Jay-Z used in-vitro fertilization to have Rumi and Sir, Beyoncé subtly addresses and denies those claims in the film. "I got pregnant unexpectedly, and it ended up being twins," she says, a statement dripping with subtext. Beyoncé is also candid about how difficult this pregnancy was; she had high blood pressure and preeclampsia, she says, and weighed 218 pounds by the time she gave birth. In order to get fit for Coachella, she cut out dairy, carbs, alcohol, and a whole host of other things, while also juggling motherhood. "I would dance, and go off to the trailer, and breastfeed the babies," she says. "There were days that I thought I'd never be the same." The Aftermath After Beychella originally aired, it was essentially scrubbed from the internet, with all the live-streamed footage presumably getting locked into a vault at Parkwood Entertainment. Until now: Homecoming offers up the original footage with layered, never-before-seen clips from both the first and second weekend of Beyoncé's headlining set. Now that the film is out, Beyoncé has also released the official live-album version of her Coachella set, including brief audio of Blue Ivy covering the "black national anthem" "Lift Every Voice and Sing" (which can be seen in Homecoming) and an official cover of Frankie Beverly and Maze's "Before I Let Go." It's a classic Beyoncé move: give fans everything they want, and then some. More Great Stories from Vanity Fair — Game of recaps: Easter eggs, references, summaries, reunions, title-sequence-giveaways, and more from the epic first episode

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