The Spice Girls may never reassemble in their original ’90s flavor again, despite ever-rumored reunions, but still, Geri Halliwell, the erstwhile Ginger Spice, remains.
Now 51 years old, Halliwell is the author of a series of nine books, most recently a young adult fantasy that made the New York Times bestseller list, dresses exclusively in white, and has “always had the philosophy of turning poop into fertilizer,” according to a new interview with Grazia.
Despite traveling the world and topping the charts with the Spice Girls in her twenties, Halliwell said she’s struggled in the decades since before finally finding her footing. She admitted that her thirties were “difficult,” and that she started finding her groove in her forties. She married Christian Horner, Team Principal of the Red Bull Formula One team, in 2015.
“I felt so much pressure in so many areas where everyone was eclipsing me, and ticking boxes that I wasn’t—relationships, life goals,” she said of her thirties. “I felt like I was in no-man’s land. The ingénue had left the building, that twenties bravado had gone and I’d fallen down a few times. It wasn’t until I got to my forties that I found inner contentment. It happened bit by bit. I began to think, ‘You know what? I’m doing the best that I can.’”
The renewed interest in Halliwell, who has appeared in the docuseries, Formula 1: Drive to Survive, is in line with a resurgence of ’90s and aughts-era boldfaced British names: first, David Beckham and Halliwell’s fellow former Spice Girl member Victoria Beckham opened up in the Netflix docuseries Beckham, opening up about cheating scandals and fancy cars. Robbie Williams is also getting the Netflix docuseries treatment, with the aptly titled Robbie Williams which premieres Nov. 8. Williams was romantically entangled with Halliwell back in 2000, and in the doc, he opened up about why he ended their relationship.
According to The Sun, Williams said that the two shared a “deep connection” over their identities as former pop group members who had left their successful groups (Williams left his boy band, Take Five), and that “I just found her company very, very easy. There is a silliness.”
Despite that, Williams blamed his own trust issues for the demise of their relationship.“It was a very confusing relationship, because she’s a girl and I’m a boy, we are very good friends trying to sort out the wreckage of the past,” he said.
After paparazzi filmed the pair on a yacht in the South of France, Williams said that one of the photographers told him, incorrectly, he now says, that Halliwell herself had alerted the media. He broke things off.
“That was a very important holiday for me because I was happy; because I wasn’t before and I wasn’t really for a long time after,” he said. Now, he says, he only has “amazing things to say about her.”
As for Halliwell, she uses her past as creative fuel, she told Grazia. “Any pain that I’ve experienced, I’ve used for creativity,” she said. “I think you can learn from the past without dwelling on it.”
She’s focused on writing these days, and says that she adopted her all-white wardrobe (which also extends to her home decor) sometime in 2019 to free up brain space and precious time.
“I was at a moment in my life where I just needed simplicity,’ she said. “Sometimes the outside world can feel complicated, and it’s just one less thing to worry about. I was looking at a lot of men who wear the same thing over and over, and I realized they don’t need to spend more than five minutes thinking about their wardrobe. They’re buying themselves time. Also, if you only wear white then everything matches.”
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