\u201cAre you a musician?\u201d she asks me suddenly. Nothing serious, I tell her. Just a bit of piano. She leans forward animatedly: \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t say that, OK? \u2018Nothing serious.\u2019 Those are the things we say to ourselves that actually block us from doing the thing we want!\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilson knows this more than most. She\u2019s had a glittering Hollywood career, from blockbuster romcoms to zeitgeisty TV shows like Lena Dunham\u2019s Girls<\/a> (as the overly critical nightmare of a mother to Allison Williams\u2019s Marnie, she reliably stole scenes). With Hanks \u2013 aka \u201cAmerica\u2019s dad\u201d \u2013 she forms the quintessential Hollywood power couple, sharing sons Chet and Truman, and Colin and Elizabeth from Hanks\u2019s first marriage. They produce movies together, too, including Mamma Mia! and My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Yet it wasn\u2019t until 2012 that she recognised what she really wanted, which was to make music.<\/p>\n \u201cThe music business in particular can be quite ageist,\u201d she points out. \u201cI came to music and songwriting in my fifties, and it was terrifying to do that. Everything is exposed: who you are, who you\u2019ve been, who people think you are\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n A friend asked her a long time ago, \u201cWhat would you like to do?\u201d Wilson said she wanted to be a songwriter, like her friend, but couldn\u2019t be \u2013 she didn\u2019t play an instrument, didn\u2019t read music. \u201cNeither do I,\u201d her friend said, who asked her if she had anything to say. \u201cYes,\u201d Wilson replied. It changed everything. \u201cShe opened that door to songwriting. She totally empowered me. I\u2019m so grateful to her. And [a man] would never [say he\u2019s not talented enough].\u201d<\/p>\n I wish they would, sometimes, I say, and she throws her head back laughing. \u201cMen are just so much bolder about that,\u201d she says, adding with a grin: \u201cAnd thank God for them, because they’ll go off and hunt down a beast for you. But it\u2019s very true [that we have to] allow ourselves permission to have the dream and say, \u2018F*** it. I\u2019m doing it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n So she did. We\u2019re here today to talk about Wilson\u2019s sixth album, Sound of a Woman, a deeply personal record created with the Grammy-winning Nashville producer Dave Cobb \u2013 behind hit albums from Chris Stapleton and Brandi Carlile<\/a> \u2013 and hit songwriter Amy Wadge. The title track, which opens the record, is sweeping and cinematic, with gliding strings and dramatic shimmers of percussion. Wilson is a lovely songwriter; there\u2019s something of Carlile or Shania Twain<\/a> in her sincere style of storytelling, although I tell her one standout lyric (\u201cI couldn\u2019t make a masterpiece out of your mistakes\u201d) also reminds me of Taylor Swift.<\/p>\n The album was born from a conversation Wilson had with Wadge over lunch. \u201cWe were talking about what it\u2019s like being a woman in our business, and just in general,\u201d she recalls. I imagine the writing sessions were a blast \u2013 Wilson is warm and wickedly fun. She\u2019s on the cusp of 70, and looks fantastic. You can see the life she\u2019s lived in her face, in the laughter lines around her eyes that crinkle whenever she smiles (a lot). \u201cThere was a wider conversation about the idea of being different women over the course of our lifetime,\u201d she says, \u201cbecause who we are as young women is so different from who we are now.\u201d<\/p>\n Given the nature of her fame, it was a surprise to read in her album biography that she didn\u2019t feel she\u2019d found her voice until very recently. \u201cI\u2019ve lived a very public life for a really long time,\u201d she says, growing more serious for a moment, \u201cand I\u2019m an extremely private person. It\u2019s served me well for a really long time, but it doesn\u2019t fit any more. It\u2019s something I\u2019ve outgrown.\u201d<\/p>\n She thinks it\u2019s something to do with raising children, the fierce desire to protect their privacy. \u201cYou\u2019re trying to make sure they can grow up in a world where they\u2019re able to be themselves, without the burden that comes with being a public figure.\u201d <\/p>\n Just look at Chet, who for a few years seemed to be working out who he was in a very public way. There was the \u201cblaccent\u201d in 2020, in which he appeared to mimic Jamaican patois in a video congratulating his dad for his latest Oscar nomination. And then the infamous \u201cWhite Boy Summer\u201d of 2021, which had people scratching their heads over whether he was being ironic or not. He\u2019s been quieter recently, though, sharing what looks like a bit of an Eat Pray Love journey around Europe, and acting and making music like his parents.<\/p>\n Wilson laughs when I bring up his holiday Instagram posts: \u201cOh my God, he\u2019s a character! He\u2019s so eccentric.\u201d She smiles fondly. \u201cYou know what? He is the person I could never have been at that age\u2026 he\u2019s just out there being himself, take it or leave it. I love that.\u201d Chet seems to have pivoted away from his rap aspirations and is now leaning into country, as half of a duo called Something Out West. \u201cHe has a great voice,\u201d Wilson says \u2013 indeed, her son harmonises with her on the country-influenced \u201cHeart He Handed Down\u201d, from her 2018 album, Bigger Picture. \u201cI always said to him, \u2018Why [rap]? But he always loved rap and hip-hop, particularly the Nineties.\u201d<\/p>\n The late film critic Roger Ebert once wrote of Wilson\u2019s husband that his central triumph was the ability to convince us that his characters think the same way we do, behave the same way we would. \u201cHanks must be a fundamentally good person to play such roles,\u201d he said. I feel Wilson is the same.<\/p>\n It comes through in her songwriting, particularly on \u201cBetter For Her\u201d, a lushly textured ballad inspired by a woman she heard about, whose husband left her only to (finally) get his act together the moment he met someone new. Her nuanced views on relationships transpire again in \u201cMarriage\u201d, a \u201chow\u2019d we get here\u201d jaunt about expectations versus reality, and getting through things together, putting in the work. Being in one of the world\u2019s most famous and, surely, most beloved couples, Wilson gets asked all the time what their secret is.<\/p>\n \u201cMy joke answer is always, \u2018Not getting divorced!\u2019\u201d she says. She wanted to write something about a long-term relationship: \u201cYou never hear about them, because it\u2019s more interesting to hear about the tumult, the sadness and the scandals. But [me and Amy] really wanted to tell the different phases of this great adventure, the wedding, the house, the kids\u2026 being in your forties and wondering, \u2018Who am I? Where is my voice? How do I find this person?\u2019 And then you jump to your sixties and you\u2019re like, \u2018Wow, we\u2019re still here, we made it!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n You never hear about long-term relationships in music, because it\u2019s more interesting to hear about the tumult, the sadness and the scandals<\/p>\n She\u2019s been thinking a lot, too, about her multigenerational family: her father, who escaped a labour camp in Bulgaria and made a life for himself in New York, and her mother, who was raised in Greece on the Albanian border. Her song, \u201cYour Mother\u201d, glides across elegant strings and tenderly picked guitars, is a tribute of sorts to Dorothy Wilson: \u201cShe was my best friend, and I was able to ask her so many things. But also, it\u2019s that thing that your mother is always with you, even if she\u2019s passed away \u2013 you still hear her voice, the advice.\u201d The album closes with the upbeat \u201cNo Matter What\u201d, which celebrates the friends and loved ones who have her back, in good times and bad.<\/p>\n \u201cI wouldn\u2019t have been able to write this album even 10 years ago,\u201d Wilson says. \u201cIt\u2019s very much of the time that I\u2019m in right now \u2013 I wanted to end the album on this really uplifting moment. And I have been so grateful for my friendships, particularly my girlfriends. They\u2019re just amazing. You have to be able to have this beautiful community of people in your life, these deep friendships.\u201d<\/p>\n And as my time with Wilson runs over, and she asks about my family and my work and earnestly insists that I should never sell myself short, I become briefly convinced that I\u2019m one of them. Like I said, she\u2019s really good at this kind of thing.<\/p>\n \u2018Sound of a Woman\u2019, the new album from Rita Wilson, is out on 1 May<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549636,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-549635","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Cover](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/RW-Sound-of-a-Woman-ART-FINAL-copy.jpeg\")
Cover art for Wilson\u2019s album, \u2018Sound of a Woman\u2019 (Press)<\/p>\n![\"(From](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-1197746560.jpg\")
(From left) Samantha Bryant, Colin Hanks, Rita Wilson, Tom Hanks, Elizabeth Ann Hanks, Chet Hanks, and Truman Theodore Hanks at the Golden Globe Awards, 5 January 2020 (Getty)<\/p>\n![\"Fundamentally](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/tregfrv.jpeg\")
Fundamentally good people: Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson in \u2018Sleepless in Seattle\u2019 (Tristar Pictures)<\/p>\n![\"Wilson](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-2271706462.jpg\")
Wilson with Hanks at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art\u2019s opening gala for the David Geffen Galleries, earlier this month (Getty)<\/p>\n