Will.i.am

by Danny White

  Fate was already pointing towards a showdown between Will and Cowell over the former’s client. However, Will spoke in encouraging terms about both Cole and Cowell. He predicted that the UK X Factor show, which Cole and Cowell had left behind for the American launch, would struggle to replace either judge. ‘I don’t think there is much doubt that Simon and Cheryl are the main two guys,’ he told the Sun. ‘Simon is the glue that holds everything together and people love to watch him, and Cheryl is like a queen in the UK. They are both irreplaceable.’

  He continued to be positive – glowingly so – about The X Factor, as the series he had made a cameo appearance in rolled on. ‘I love X Factor,’ he said. The two acts he selected for praise were both in Cole’s category. For him, Cher Lloyd was the queen of the series, and he backed her to win. However, the pint-sized pop princess could only manage fourth place. The highest finisher of Cole’s category was Rebecca Ferguson, another act that Will had plenty of time for. ‘You’d think Rebecca was hanging out with Marvin Gaye every day, she has so much soul,’ he said. ‘I would love to work with [Ferguson and Lloyd]. If I was starting off and went on that show, I’d never make it through as the talent is of such a high standard.’

  However, positive words about the franchise were about to leave Will’s vocabulary. Everything was about to go terribly wrong for Cole, and Will was about to be handed a crash course in both the politics of the entertainment industry and the scale of that challenges that artists’ representatives can face. His client’s dream of cracking America as a judge on The X Factor fell at the first hurdle.

  During her first day as a judge, in the auditions in Los Angeles, Cole appeared lost. Her outfit and hairstyle was also criticized – with one wag comparing her look to that of Star Wars creature Chewbacca. Over the next three days of auditions, Cole did not improve her form enough to deflect Cowell’s growing sense of unease. Cole seemed, said Cowell, later, explaining her departure, ‘bewildered’. She was booed by the audience at one point, had minimal rapport with her fellow judges, and became tearful when she was asked to repeat herself. It was all a world away from her reign on the UK show, on which she had appeared almost majestic.

  As the decision was reached to replace Cole, Will was thrust into the complex, tense and financially significant negotiations surrounding her removal from the series. Cole had signed a £1.2 million contract to judge on the show, so the stakes were high as negotiations began.

  Initially, according to Tom Bower’s biography of Simon Cowell, an offer was made to Cole – not through Will but another of her agents, Seth Friedman – of $2m to pay up her US contract, and a further £2m to return to the UK X Factor. Cowell’s camp indicated they wanted a swift resolution. Friedman was then joined in the negotiations by Will. First, he requested equity in the X Factor franchise for Cole, in addition to any other deal. Cowell responded that the equity was not his to offer, but instead offered to up her fee for the UK series, include the potential for bonuses for ratings, and agreed to award her a credit as an executive producer of the series. As he put it, he was making a generous offer in order to resolve the negotiation ‘cleanly and quickly’.

  Will replied that he would go away for a while, ‘and consider other options’. According to Bower’s much-discussed biography of Simon Cowell, Will accused Cowell of undermining Cole by reducing the volume of her microphone. According to Bower, Cowell felt that Will was ‘riding his own ego’, rather than working in the best interests of Cole. In turn, Will insisted that the opposite was true.

  When details of the episode were leaked to the TMZ website, Cowell complained: ‘Will doesn’t understand the pressures we’re under.’ While Cowell’s aides complained that Will did not realize that they were trying to help him and Cole, Cowell said that he thought he and Will ‘had a good relationship’.

  Cowell’s frustration with Will at this stage is understandable. Will’s client was being offered a lavish package. However, Will’s perspective should also be considered fairly. His client had been enormously upset by her departure from the show. Having moved to America months ahead of the series, uprooting her life and replacing members of her team, she had been axed after just four days in the new job. Furthermore, Will was aware that Cowell’s empire and the Fox television network were, between them, sitting on billions of dollars. Thus, it could be that the opening offers made to Cole were not as generous as they might appear to the outside observer.

  Will was determined to fight hard for his client and not to be cowed by the combined power of Cowell and Fox TV. His steadfast approach almost reaped a complete turnaround as, behind the scenes, members of the Fox network and the Freemantle Media production company were actively lobbying for Cole to return to the US show as soon as possible. Freemantle’s Cecile Frot-Coutaz prepared to contact Cole to invite her back, and Will to instruct him to take Cole to the American embassy in London to obtain a new work permit.

  However, Will was not about to fall at their feet. He asked whether the offer for Cole to return was, in fact, a trick. He wondered whether he and Cole were being led into a situation whereby, if she refused the offer, Team Cowell could refuse to pay her. Cowell was frustrated and asked Will whether Cole wanted to return or not. Will replied with an ambiguous: ‘That isn’t your concern’. In the end the negotiations were concluded successfully, but with an agreement that did not include Cole’s return to either the American or UK X Factor show. For now, at least, her professional relationship with Cowell was over, and she needed Will’s support more than ever.

  Throughout the drama, Cole, usually comfortable with publicity, had remained publicly silent. Aside from some newspaper stories quoting ‘sources close to’ her – the authenticity of which were open to debate – she had not said a word. Instead, it was Will who began the public ‘rehabilitation’ of his client. It was no surprise that, despite the huge disappointment and ignominy Cole had suffered, Will spoke in optimistic terms. ‘She always comes back stronger, and she always comes back bigger,’ he told Heat magazine. ‘Cheryl has been through rougher things than this, so this is going to be no problem for her. The X Factor is not the only way for Cheryl to break the US, it’s not like it’s the only show on television.’

  At this stage, relations between Will and Cowell were, certainly in public, still essentially warm. Asked if Cowell was to blame for Cole’s humiliating departure, Will resisted the temptation to blame The X Factor boss alone. ‘It’s easy to imagine Simon as this one-man empire, but that’s not the case. He has people he needs to answer to and sometimes his hands are going to be tied,’ said Will. It was a sentence that at once absolved and belittled Cowell. Given Will’s intelligence, one suspects this was not accidental. However, he continued in more friendly terms, saying, ‘I can only tell you what I have seen first-hand: that’s a guy who deeply cares for her.’

  Meanwhile, Will preferred to look to Cole’s future, predicting that in the months ahead she would be working with some top musical artists, including Rihanna, Katy Perry, Usher, ‘and of course the Peas’.

  His positivity over Cole’s future is classic Will, of course. Few celebrities are as powered by positivity as he is. From his childhood games in the playground at school, to his car-park pep talk with Taboo, and onwards, Will has always radiated upbeat energy, and has also developed an almost Olympian skill at looking on the bright side of any situation. If you ever find yourself in a troubled or despairing situation, you could do a lot worse than to run it past Will, whose mind seems to be a factory of bright-side perspectives.

  These powers are mostly to be applauded, of course. However, in the case of Cole’s X Factor failure, his ‘silver lining’ of that particular cloud stretches credibility. For Cole, this had been a devastating blow. She had staked so much on making it on the American X Factor – leaving her country, much of her original management and her solo career all behind – placing all her eggs in one basket. To have those eggs hurled out of the basket almost immediately was embarrassing for Cole
as a person and, potentially, devastating to her professionally.

  When he joined her US management team, Will had been full of bombast: ‘She’s got a bright future ahead – no question,’ he said. Therefore, the hit that Cole took in being ejected from The X Factor not only struck her, but also Will, who had told friends that he was so confident he would stake his reputation on making her American dream come true.

  As well as talking up Cole, Will attempted to raise her stature by talking down the circus from which she had been ejected. He began to argue that she had wasted her time on The X Factor. ‘Cheryl is a great artist and performer and to see that go away just for TV – it wasn’t cool. It was a waste of talent,’ he told the Daily Star Sunday. He added that by concentrating on television rather than music, she had ‘abandoned her basics’.

  He also slammed the team behind the UK show for what he saw as the failure of 2010 X Factor graduate Cher Lloyd’s career. ‘She should have been huge,’ he said of Lloyd, who had been Cole’s act during that series. Of course, part of his dismissal of The X Factor was due to his forthcoming starring role on what would be its UK primetime Saturday-night rival. The Voice, he argued, was quite a contrast to The X Factor. The show on which he would appear would, he said, ‘honour what music was originally about and take it back full circle to what it was always meant to be, The Voice.’ What better way to gain the last laugh in this sorry saga than to make the show that Cowell dreaded a big success?

  Meanwhile, Will took stock. He admitted that ‘it was hard’ to deal with the Cole fall-out. He had not been prepared for the issue to arise as it had, and he had to learn fast the best way to respond to such episodes. Looking back later, he felt he had learned well. ‘Since the American X Factor stuff I’ve learned a lot – about myself and the music industry,’ he said.

  While Will and his client were individually shaken, their relationship seemed not to be. One of the first times that Cole was seen in public following the saga, was alongside Will in Cannes, France. Cole was even said to have cooked meals for Will during his stint on The Voice. The Geordie also taught him British slang terms, to help settle him into the country better. They found that, emotionally, they were each other’s greatest source of solace. ‘At first it would bring my emotions down,’ said Will, ‘but now when things come up we giggle and laugh about them together’.

  If Will continues to mentor and manage Cole and other artists there will be more tough times in the future as they navigate the rollercoaster path of show business. Being able to laugh, or at least smile, through the downturns will make the upturns all the sweeter.

  More recently, Will has been less charitable and philosophical in discussing Simon Cowell’s role, taking a very thinly veiled swipe at him during an interview with the Sun newspaper. ‘There are English guys that go to America and it’s hard for them. Let’s take Cheryl Cole, for example. She went and did a TV show and it was hard for her. And it wasn’t hard for her because of an American. It was hard for her because of a Brit. Now that’s kind of weird, isn’t it?’

  In an interview with the Sunday Mirror, he was even more mischievous towards Cowell, saying he hoped that Cole would join him on The Voice one day. ‘I mean, why not? That would really p*ss the big man off, wouldn’t it?’ Earlier, in response to Cowell’s statement that Cole ‘missed’ being on The X Factor, and would ‘100 per cent’ be welcomed back to the fold, Will was once again rather dismissive of the music mogul and his empire. ‘Cheryl won’t do X Factor,’ he told the Mirror. ‘Why does she need it? Why are you going to make someone else rich? Cheryl needs her own show.’

  Significantly, during his defence of Cole’s Voice appearance, Will seemed to be managing the public’s expectations of his client’s ability to crack the American market. His previously bold assertion that she would make it big in America, despite the X Factor setback, seemed to have been knocked. ‘America’s a weird place right now, in terms of breaking,’ he said. ‘I don’t know who is breaking America right now.’

  Will could not resist a cheeky dig at Cowell when he spoke with the Evening Standard’s Craig McLean. The journalist persistently pressed Will to make an outrageous statement about Cowell, to no avail. He suggested to Will that Cowell had been less than honest in his handling of Cole’s X Factor fall. Will stared into McLean’s eyes, clenched his fist and moved it up and down, in a fairly clear simulation of masturbation. ‘Wish you could print hand gestures’, Will said, as his fist moved up and down. When McLean told Will how he was interpreting his hand gesture, Will remained teasing. ‘Nah, like, whatever dude’, he said. Pressed one more time to reveal what really happened between him, Cowell and Cole, Will said: ‘I wish I could show you. But I’m not that kind of guy.’

  Some of the above anti-Cowell bravado had as much to do with promoting a rivalry between his new home, The Voice, and Cowell’s empire, as it did any genuine remaining bitterness. Will has, more recently, seemed keen to put the entire US X Factor saga in the past. He did his best to consign it to the history books by speaking about his client’s future. ‘The Cheryl that we know now is different from the one we’re going to know ten years from now,’ he said. ‘It was ten years ago that me and the Black Eyed Peas wrote “Where is the Love?”’ he continued, in a clear reference to how far the band had come since then. ‘I’m planning a future for Cheryl in that way. Madonna is Madonna. You don’t want Cheryl to be Madonna, you want Cheryl to be Cheryl.’

  Final word on the X Factor saga goes to Cheryl, who showed there were no hard feelings between her and her manager when she described Will as a ‘genius’, and promised to take him for a special night out in the North East of England. ‘No matter where I am in the world, someone always comes up and says Newcastle is one of the best nights out,’ she said. ‘I’m taking Will to Bigg Market for a kebab. I’m planning to take him out up there. He took me to downtown LA. That’s where he’s from, Boyle Heights. I’ll have to show him what the North East has to offer.’

  It would be fascinating to know what he made of the ‘Toon’ experience. She also took him for good old-fashioned fish and chips in London. She has, more recently, described him as ‘an honorary Brit’. Across the Atlantic, when Cole celebrated her twenty-ninth birthday in Las Vegas, Will played a DJ set during the knees-up at the XS nightclub.

  Naturally, their intense relationship has prompted continued speculation that they are a romantic item. As we have seen, Will’s bandmates have even humorously encouraged this theory. With a wider fascination over Will’s private life, there has been much interest in just how close he and his client are.

  As for Cole, she speaks fondly of Will. When asked by an interviewer for the Guardian newspaper what quality she most admires in a person, her instantaneous reply was: ‘Loyalty. Someone who is always there, not judging you, regardless of what situation you’re in.’ She volunteered Will as an example of such a person. ‘We call each other family,’ she says. It is that, familial, description that comes closest to summing up the bond. They are more like brother and sister than anything else. Will was asked by Q magazine if he was, in fact, Cole’s fella. ‘Fella? Fella? I like that,’ he said, ‘that’s a good word for a new squeeze.’ However, he quickly scotched the perception. Saying that while ‘on the Internet we are married with children’, in reality ‘people know we are occasional work colleagues’.

  In denying the rumours of romance, he was careful not to downplay his admiration for Cole. ‘Cheryl’s awesome’, he said, adding: ‘That accent I would die for’. He recounted how he sometimes shows her something unpleasant on the Internet, merely to get the chance to hear her say, in her Geordie accent, ‘That’s disgusting!’.

  Elsewhere, during an interview with the Sun, he was more direct in his denial. ‘Yes, Cheryl and I are both in love – with music’, he said. ‘That’s why we get on so well. Those rumours were hilarious. I’ve been lucky to work with her. I think I’ve helped to bring out the best in her.’

  Cole, too, denies the suggest
ion. In her case, the denials are more annoyed than witty. ‘Of course that’s the natural thing people go to,’ she told ES magazine. ‘Heaven forbid you should have any other kind of relationship with someone from the opposite sex.’

  Meanwhile, he found himself having to jump to his client’s defence once again when she appeared on The Voice. In May 2012, Cheryl sang her new single, ‘Call My Name’, on the show’s semi-final. She had promised that, in keeping with the overall ethos of the show, she would not mime her vocals during her performance. Onlookers said that Cole had looked to Will for ‘reassurance’ at several points in the song.

  For the appearance she wore a colourful outfit and her dance moves were dramatic, including a ‘swan dive’. Many viewers complained on Twitter that Cole appeared to be miming. However, her publicist insisted otherwise. ‘She sang live with a backing track’, said the spokesperson. A ‘source’ quoted in the Sun said: ‘It would have been hard for Cheryl to have sung through the whole performance – it was such an energetic dance routine’.

  Will, though, was having none of it. He said: ‘I was there. She wasn’t miming. People say a lot of things.’ Elsewhere, he had berated the media for giving Cole ‘shit’. He said that they should recognize her true worth: ‘She’s your royalty, man’. He has even gone as far as comparing her to his all-time inspiration, Michael Jackson. ‘Like Michael Jackson, she is a complete perfectionist’, he said, in an eyebrow-raising comparison. ‘Unless she is 100 per cent happy with something she just won’t put it out there.’

  As for Cole, she remains enamoured by Will’s magical talent. ‘I would work with Will for the rest of my career if I could,’ she said. ‘He is absolutely inspiring, futuristic, creative.’