Jim Masters TV | November 10, 2024
Zara Phillips is a singer and songwriter, actor, author, and activist. As an adoptee herself, much of her work is centered around the adoption world and is focused on improving understanding the lifelong impact of adoption. She is a mother of three and is married to musician Richard Thompson. She divides her time between London and New Jersey. Zara joins host Jim Masters for a very inspiring, heartfelf conversation and interview on this episode of The Jim Masters Show series.
Zara was raised in Totteridge, North London, and was adopted as a baby. She found her birth mother at 24 and after a lifelong search, her birth father at 51. She was always singing and writing as a child, which led to her becoming a harmony singer in the 80s, with acts like Bob Geldof, Matt Bianco, David Essex, and Nick Kamen.
As she celebrates the release of her extraordinary autobiographical film Somebody’s Daughter, Zara Phillips offers up some tough love truths that fly in the face of the often cheery, sanitized way adopted children (and other beings) are depicted in Disney films and other media. From her years of advocacy,studying contemporary sociological research and personal experiences as an adopted person herself, the passionate lifelong advocate for adoptees knows that even well into adulthood, their existential struggles of feeling like outsiders with little known stories of their history and birth parents makes them at least four times more likely to attempt suicide. They are also much more inclined to turn to addiction as a coping mechanism, as Zara did in her teens and early 20s.
Somebody’s Daughter - and the 2018 book and 2022 one-woman show the film is based on – focusses on Zara’s personal journey of overcoming early addiction, navigating her life and meeting her birth father after many years and struggles after connecting with her birth mother. The project’s true driving force is tofacilitate honest, vulnerable conversations about adoption. Too many people, she says, are ignoring these important issues.
“I want little adoptees to have a chance to be heard in a way kids of my generation were not,” she says. “If I can help one adoptee feel validated, and one parent to look at his or her kid and understand the grieving process, that would make the film and all of my related media endeavors worthwhile.”
Throughout her journey, she is buoyed by the witty encouragement of two middle aged guys she originally met in her first AA meeting, who serve as an amusing “Greek Chorus” to bounce her thoughts off. It’s also heartwarming at the end of the film to see Zara spending time and becoming friends with another of Vittorio’s biological daughters. As sweet and charming as he was as an old man at Dunkin’ Donuts, he was quite the playboy in his day and fathered seven children from six different mothers – three Brits and four Americans. Two of them, including Zara, were adopted.
While taking some years away from creative endeavors to raise a family, she came back strong in the 2000s, releasing two albums(When The Rain Stops and You. Me & Us) produced by Ted Perlman, whose multi-faceted musical resume includes Whitney Houston, Bob Dylan and Chicago; earning a Best Homegrown Documentary honor for her 2008 film Roots Unknown at the Garden State Film Festival; and publishing in 2008 her first book Mother Me, a compelling memoir about her ongoing struggles as an adoptee now raising a family of her own.
A few years later, Zara’s song “I’m Legit,” co-written with Darryl McDaniels (DMC of Run-DMC), was a successful single in the adoption world and beyond. In 2014, Zara’s one woman show Beneath My Father’s Sky, directed by Eliza and Eric Roberts won Best Direction at NYC’s United Solo Festival and was performed in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Connecticut and London in 2016. During this era, she was presented with an Angel in Adoption Award by the Congressional Coalition of Adoption Institute. Her most recent album, released in 2020, is Meditation and Kitkats, and she currently tours and performs with her husband, British folk-rock legend Richard Thompson, who scored Somebody’s Daughter.
Not long after she finished a new novel about a girl trying to find her father, Zara reconnected with Vittorio, causing her to rewrite the project as a second memoir, which became Somebody’s Daughter. Published by John Blake/Bonnier, it was released first in the UK, then the U.S. in 2018. She wrote andperformed her one woman play based on it in England and the U.S. in 2022.
Comments