EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
STRONGER AND WISER AS SHE EMBR ACES A NEW CHAPTER
ON R AISING CONFIDENT WOMEN, FINDING NEW LOVE AND RETURNING TO HER ‘HAPPY PLACE’ ON STAGE
If anyone knows how to start over, it’s Melanie Brown. Having risen from the ashes of a toxic ten-year relationship, the feisty Spice Girl has rebuilt her life with the same zeal that won her a place in one the most successful girl bands in history.
She’s also written a best-selling book and become a campaigner against domestic violence while successfully raising three children – Phoenix, now 25, Angel, 16, and 12-year-old Madison.
In her 20s, as Scary Spice, Melanie was responsible for inspiring a generation with girl power. Now 48, could she do the same for midlife women also in their second act?
“You are as old as you feel,” she says firmly during our exclusive interview. “Numbers aren’t relevant. You can have a bit of a panic when you come into your 40s, because you haven’t got things quite as you thought they were going to be. You have some of your hardest challenges. But there’s also something really freeing about it.
“I don’t know if it’s because you’re putting yourself out there, or just ready for it in life. But there’s a lot to be said about women in their 40s because they’re more aware and selfassured. It’s an age not to mess with.”
It has taken her several years, however, to reach this point in her own life. In 2018, Melanie wrote her memoir Brutally Honest, , a detailed account of her marriage to the film producer Stephen Belafonte, which she says was emotionally, physically and financially abusive. He has always denied the claims.
This week, the book is republished with three new chapters, describing how she started again “from ground zero”.
After leaving her then husband in 2017, she returned to the UK from Los Angeles in 2019 for the Spice Girls’ reunion tour, lived for a while at her mum’s house in Leeds and slowly, painfully, began to piece herself back together.
PAYING IT FORWARD
She became a patron of the charity Women’s Aid and was awarded an MBE – which she received from Prince William, then the Duke of Cambridge, at Buckingham Palace in 2022 – for helping survivors of domestic abuse and raising awareness about the issue.
On a personal front, she found love with entrepreneur and hairdresser Rory McPhee, whom she plans to marry at St Paul’s Cathedral, and bought her own house.
She is, she acknowledges, still a work in progress, and “on a path to self-healing”. But it takes time.
“It’s about claiming back your power, and that’s not easy when you’ve been left devastated, physically and emotionally,” she says of her former life.
“The scars may not be visible, and you have to rewire everything because somebody has taken control of every aspect of your
