Suppose you could be an animal for one day, what would you pick?
“I know what I’d be,” Beyoncé deadpans, stifling back giggles. “A whale.”
She shoots Michelle Williams a “you get me” look as the journalist from the Amsterdam music channel Toazted asks her why.
“I’ve loved whales since I was a little girl…” she says wistfully.
“She wants to touch one one day,” Williams declares. This strange interview has circled the internet’s drain as early as 2016, the only evidence that Destiny’s Child must have been zooted due to the Netherlands’ relaxed laws on marijuana use in 2001 – the year this exchange took place.
Her quote is rather banal, but comes to life in her delivery of it. Red eyes, smiling like a veritable naughty girl. What makes this theory even more believable is Williams admitting she’d be a black panther to “oohs” from the other girls before Williams begins pawing at the air.
Beyoncé was so into whales, apparently, that she mentioned her ambitions to meet one in another Destiny’s Child interview for men’s magazine Stuff in 2001. “I want to pet a whale. But it has to be a huge one. You can’t get too close, though, or the boat can float into their mouths.”
Huh?! is the only appropriate reaction. Perhaps the only Beyoncé interview more memorable than this was the name game quickfire quiz she endured with Tyra Banks. The magazine printed her quote large next to a photo of Beyoncé looking sexy in a black halter top. (To be fair, Rowland’s sexy pic was accompanied by the quote, “I went on a blind date recently and the guy looked like Mr. Potato Head.”)
When faced with the question of whether or not she was high during this now infamous interview, Bey insisted that she wasn’t.
“I still love whales," Beyoncé told Elle. “And I love being in the ocean. And that video was after a 16-hour press day. Not marijuana!!”