Gabrielle Union celebrates Beyoncé for EW's 2023 Entertainers of the Year: 'She's a force unlike anything we have ever seen'

The actress recalls the “spiritual experience” of going to Bey’s Renaissance World Tour and the community it fostered for those who may not always feel like they belong.

Since 15 in her stilettos, Beyoncé’s been strutting in this game. 

Gabrielle Union first met her when she was 17 or 18 with the members of Destiny’s Child on the set of a commercial. Even then, the Truth Be Told actress was impressed by the diva-in-training’s level of focus and preparedness, which has only grown in the intervening decades. 

Nearly 30 years into her career and Beyoncé is still managing to surprise her fans and silence her detractors, while constantly innovating, challenging herself, and by extension, others in the entertainment industry — she’s the bar, and she keeps raising it.  

This year, Queen Bey invited the world to come together to release the wiggle in the disco-ball reflection of her record-breaking Renaissance World Tour and its subsequent documentary. Union and her family — including husband Dwyane Wade, and daughters Zaya, 16, and Kaavia, 5 — showed up and showed out, silver and all, to two nights of the Los Angeles stop on Beyoncé’s trek.

Here, Union pays homage to the Queen and discusses how her global dance party became a cultural movement. 

That first night, we didn't bring the kids but it was like…we turned into 12-year-olds. We got there early and just watched all the people fill in, all the people that wanted to be there early to see all the different kinds of people coming together in community.

You looked out and the crowd looked like the world, and it was just so powerful. You saw so many people who were a billion percent free. They showed up completely as themselves and they felt safe to do it with tens of thousands of other people. I just don't know too many people or places that could bring all different kinds of folks together where they feel safe and seen and heard and like they belong — because they do belong.

And then the next night we brought the kids, and watching it through their eyes was pretty amazing. We were able to go down into the Friends & Family area, but Zaya went into the Club Renaissance area and I watched her just kind of disappear into her community. She lit up. It was a different kind of thing than I've ever really been able to witness firsthand now that she's a teenager and she has her own life. That was really special. It was like a gift that Bey gave Zaya, the reaction Zaya got from people being there, and just surrendering to the music and the history of it.

There were parts of it where I just wept. I just wept watching. It was an emotional experience and... it was spiritual. It was a spiritual experience. This tour, what she accomplished, I've never seen any artist have this level of control where their hand is in everything. And to not only have that level of control where she is the bottom line, but to have it be a Black woman. I don't know anybody who was unmoved by what she accomplished and the enormity of the task.

And then you layer in the fact that she had just had surgery. We are used to dancing, we are used to choreography, and unbeknownst to us — until you watch the Renaissance movie — that she had to completely rejigger a whole tour to focus on her voice, on her other instrument. In the movie, you see she started to heal and gain strength back in her legs and they layered in more choreography. So you're watching her overcome her own limitations, her own physical limitations.... You saw her as a complete force.

You also saw her as a mother on the stage in the middle of the damn concert. As a mother, as a mama bear, as an artist, as a boss, as a sanger — let us not be fooled. That woman is singing, the mic is on, and she's giving you this experience and she's calling us all in. I mean, tell me who else is doing it. I haven't seen it. And to have the crowd actually look like the world — she's a revelation. And it's weird to say that Beyoncé is a revelation all these years in the game, but she's a revelation. She's a force unlike anything we have ever seen.

—As told to Lester Fabian Brathwaite

More EW Entertainers of the Year 2023:

• EW celebrates "Barbenheimer"

• Chase Stokes celebrates Kelsea Ballerini

• RuPaul celebrates Sasha Colby

• Rachel Sennott celebrates Ayo Edebiri

• James Marsden celebrates Jury Duty

• Brian Jordan Alvarez celebrates M3GAN

• Troy Baker celebrates Pedro Pascal

• Owenn celebrates Taylor Swift

• Matt Rogers celebrates Vanderpump Rules
  

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.