Putting family first. Richard Lawson tells Us Weekly exclusively how the family is rallying behind stepdaughter Solange in the wake of her separation from music video director Alan Ferguson. Just days after the “Cranes in the Sky” singer, 33, announced the split, Lawson, 72, spoke with Us at the Introduction to the Diverse Perspective event on Sunday, November 3, in North Hollywood.
“[We’re] helping her just work through it. It’s all a process,” the Poltergeist actor said. “And the beautiful thing is, is that everybody comes out the other side is the better for it.”
Solange confirmed news of the divorce on Friday, November 1 via a statement on Instagram. “The past 2 years have brought me more physical and spiritual transition and evolution than ever before,” the singer wrote. “I met a phenomenal man who changed every existence of my life. Early this year we separated and parted ways … I find it necessary to protect the sacredness of my personal truth and to live in it fully just as I have before and will continue to do.”
The Grammy-winning artist met Ferguson, 56, 11 years ago and the two married at the Marigny Opera House in New Orleans in November 2014. Solange shares a 15-year-old son with her first husband, Daniel Smith, whom she married when she was 17 years old. The singer confirmed her separation from Smith in a 2007 interview with Essence magazine.
Though Solange and Ferguson had kept their marriage relatively private, the “Things I Imagined” singer noted how living in the public eye impacted her stance in their relationship. “I’ve lived my best and worst moments in front of the lens and gaze of the world since I was a teenager,” she wrote on Instagram. “It is unfair to not have power of your own story as you shape and mold and rewrite it yourself.”
Lawson later went on to tell Us that Solange and her sister Beyoncé are “probably the best mothers that you have ever seen,” crediting his wife, Tina Knowles Lawson, as the reason the two singers thrive in motherhood.
“Tina is the ultimate mother,” Lawson said of his spouse. “She’s constantly thinking about helping, supporting, understanding her daughters. And so they have taken up that mantle.”
