Jessica Simpson: ‘I Was Addicted to Being Wanted’

It’s lunchtime at Glamour’s cover shoot in L.A., and Jessica Simpson, true to her Texas roots, has ordered tacos. Not just for her. For everyone. Because that’s the Jessica Simpson way. She’s on her fourth outfit change and is embracing each new look with the professionalism of a veteran.

Covers aren’t unusual for Simpson; she’s been doing them for more than 20 years. She’s played the pop-star pinup and the all-American girl; she’s gone both full Marilyn Monroe and wholesome housewife. But this cover shoot, to launch her tell-all memoir Open Book, is different. It is, simply, her. Stripped, in motion, of her makeup and her blown-out hair, until she is raw and, at times, painfully vulnerable.

She knows how some people see her. Church singer turned teenage pop star. One of the original reality-TV stars. The name behind a shoe empire. A global punching bag for weight gain and loss. The Jessica Simpson she documents in the pages of her memoir is far more complex, with a whole luggage suite of history and scars, including pill and alcohol struggles, childhood sexual abuse, divorce, and a host of toxic relationships. “I didn’t do the book until I was sober," she says. "I had always had a book deal in the works, but I never went forward with it.

“I don’t think people really know me for owning the hard mistakes,” she says. “We can slip up here and there, but to have had to reveal such deep life-changing moments…I think it only makes people more willing to listen.”

Simpson is a listener too, and very present throughout the entire day of the shoot. Despite the fact that her phone is lighting up with hundreds of notifications, calls, and texts thanks to an extract of her book that was prereleased that morning, she doesn’t engage with it at all.

She’s kind and curious, indulging me as I explain the concept of 90 Day Fiancé (my latest reality-TV obsession). Ironically, the woman who let cameras into her newlywed home with Nick Lachey doesn’t watch any reality TV at all, instead preferring crime shows and young adult dramas like Riverdale. “It was The Real World and The Osbournes and then me and Nick,” she says. “I know things are so set up and everything so positioned…toward the end I knew what was going to make it to air, and so I would just go through the motions and do it, and just so it could be over because it was a hard time in our marriage.”

Simpson places huge importance on the relationships in her life, and that’s evident in the pages of her memoir. Whether it’s the moment she told her parents about the sexual abuse she suffered as a child, the challenges of becoming a mother, or the role her husband, Eric Johnson, the former NFL player, and her closest friends played in her journey to sobriety.

Her mom, Tina, joins her on our set, and lingers behind the camera with some encouraging motherly words throughout the day: “You look great.” In fact, Simpson’s mother and father had insight into the whole book-writing process: “I would send them every chapter.” While she writes with tenderness about many of the characters, including her ex-husband (“I still have a lot of love for Nick”), not everyone fares the same.

So who is going to be surprised with how they’re depicted in the book, I ask? She lets out a huge belly laugh. “Maybe some ex-boyfriends.” John Mayer? I venture. “But I think they will be proud of my…clarity,” she continues. “There were so many different realizations for me, that I thought were love that actually weren’t. You know, it was like I was addicted to being wanted.”

Jessica’s guide to life:

I’ve kept journals since I was 15.

Going through them for the book was going through a lot of the demons again. But it’s also going through a lot of the good. It was like finding my way home to myself.

I called it Open Book because I am an open book and I don’t have secrets.

For me to write a book, I wanted people to know how vulnerable I was and how caught I felt, because so many people get caught in that web.

Talking about everything gives nothing to people that they can rip apart and steal from you.

They can’t steal my joy from the pride I take in knowing myself. I really don’t have fear about the book, because I know that I did the best I could and I’m living the best life I possibly can. Sometimes it’s a good day and sometimes it’s a bad day—I’m not perfect by any means. But I’m walking into this very secure, because the book is my heart, and that is my story and it’s nobody else’s.

The “mom jeans” moment? I was globally beaten down for being a size 4!

I felt good up there, I felt confident, and then it ruined the stage for me, and the stage was my home. It broke my home. I’d already had broken moments within a home where I had to walk out of a marriage, but my stage has been like my home since I was, like, a child. That’s where I could be honestly alone with myself.

I’m so happy that times are changing now and more women are accepted for who they are. People are flaunting themselves at every size, because that’s how it absolutely should be.

I think it’s important for people to know that what I did, giving up alcohol, was seriously the easy part for me.

The hard part was breaking down the reasons why. The reasons why alcohol was my crutch. You know because people are like, “Are you an alcoholic?” It’s like, No, I had a drinking problem. I don’t identify with that. I needed to slow down and I needed to, like, feel things again because there were so many moments that were passing me by. That I wasn’t, like, grasping and enjoying. When your kids are growing up, you only have it for that amount of time, and I just saw my whole life flash before my eyes.

When I went through the divorce [from Nick], I divorced the world—that’s how it felt to me.

As if I let people down. People looked to us as the trophy couple and I was the trophy wife, even though I didn’t know how to use the Swiffer. I tried; like, I mean I was not Betty Crocker and we all know that, but I tried.

With Nick, I tried to handle everything with as much care as possible.

He has a family, he’s married. I never want his kids to think something that, you know, there were parts…there are parts of people that’s their story to tell. It’s really the marriage through my lens. People don’t want me lying; they want the truth from me.

I think people respect that I created a huge business.

And that I pioneered a way for all women of all sizes to feel beautiful and also feel like they have style. I am size inclusive. You have to look to people for inspiration instead of trying to criticize them because you’re insecure. You really have to understand how to be able to walk into a room and there be no judgment and you accept them for who they are.

Would I go back and change that relationship [with John Mayer]? No.

Because it made me love Eric even more. It made me a better wife, it made me a better lover, it made me a better partner. Yes, it was a relationship that was a yo-yo; it was always back and forth. To feel wanted and then to be shut out, and to feel wanted, to be completely shut out.

I mean, my advice is to pick up on those signs. If there have been three breakups, stop it there. There can’t be 9 to 10, because that’s immature. That’s not love. If you’re actually in love, you’re not going to give up.

I came out about sexual abuse because I want girls to know that it can stop sooner.

For me, I should have spoken up sooner because my parents would have protected me. They protected me immediately after that. Being a parent of a seven-year-old, and that’s how old I was when it started, and I have a six-year-old, you know, and now I’m, like, very conscious of what’s going on.

Eric is such a good listener. He’s so supportive.

You can’t not connect with someone like him. He wants to know everything about you, the good and the bad. Find somebody like that. I mean, it took divorce and a lot of really long, intense relationships to get there, but I did.