Jenna Dewan is staggering, clawing, and shimmying her way through the entire Thriller dance in a big-shouldered, rhinestone-studded dress cut asymmetrically at the thighs. Everyone at the BAZAAR.com photoshoot stops cold to watch this magnetic figure in total command. It’s not just that she knows every single step to the Michael Jackson zombie epic, but she moves so fluidly that her limbs seem made of liquid titanium, packaged as the fittest set of human legs I, or you—I feel confident I can speak for you in this—have ever seen. There is not one imperfection, not one micro-dimple from a cupcake she ate seven years ago. This woman, trained at age 19 at the heels of Janet Jackson, doesn’t need Photoshop. I’d be seething with jealousy, but honestly, I’m too astonished. Who is this woman? Is she real or some Chorus Line-meets-Westworld robot?
There is a big disconnect between the woman Dewan tells me she is the next day at the Beverly Hills Hotel's Polo Lounge and the one I saw shredding Thriller for kicks. For one thing, you would never know she’s going through a fairly public split from her state-sanctioned Hot Husband, Channing Tatum (but more on that later). She keeps apologizing for being "a sweaty mess"—she came straight from a rehearsal for World of Dance, the performance competition she hosts on NBC which will be premiering its second season on May 29—but she is glowing in a blush-colored Adidas jacket and track pants snapped on the sides. There is no visible sweat, just her dewy-fresh skin and her quick, easy smile as she rakes through the West Hollywood, a chopped salad that adheres to her vegetarian diet. "I’m a total mess," Dewan claims. "I’ve never once woken up early with enough time to get ready before I get my daughter to school… My hair’s always wet, I’m always changing clothes. I mean, it’s always a little haphazard in my life." Things are getting better though! "I do have a hamper now," she announces proudly.
If her hot mess talk is to be believed, Dewan, 37, isn’t the simulation I originally thought, but rarely have I met a person so infused with singular purpose. Being a dancer is part of her divine code. She’s a twist on Cartesian logic: I dance, therefore I am. If Dewan didn’t dance, what else would she do? Actually, she does a lot—acting, most notably in Step Up, before the short-lived but beloved Witches of the East End, and the upcoming ensemble I Love You, Berlin, alongside Helen Mirren and Renee Zellweger. She hosts World of Dance (which was the most popular summer show in its first season, and a third has already been green-lit) with her mentor and show judge J. Lo, and has filled in for Kelly Ripa on Live with Kelly and Ryan. Her relatively new production company, Everheart (named for her five-year-old daughter Everly), has several projects in development, including Roomies, a musical romantic comedy with director Andy Fickman. She’s a quadruple threat, but dancing is the original lightning rod that electrifies all of her ground.
Isabel Marant dress, Nikita Karizma bra, Giuseppe Zanotti pink shoes, Jennifer Fisher silver star earring, and silver triangle earring, Le Vian diamond gold ring, Hearts on Fire diamond silver ring.
Though Dewan’s career has always thrived, her marriage to Tatum, whose profile soared from two Magic Mike movies, has been no small part of her image. Okay, truth, some people only knew her as Hot Man’s Wife. Tatum, the hunk with a sensitive side, seemed her male counterpart in eerily perfect physique, like the two of them were blasted into being during the same montage sequence in a movie about sexy bots who just want to dance! An exquisite match, but last month, the two shattered the dream (for people who over-invest in celebrity coupledom—me) when they released a statement on their respective Instagram accounts announcing their conscious uncoupling. In an industry known for blip-length marriages, it was truly shocking.
They’d fallen in love on set in 2005 while filming Step Up, and Dewan still remembers their chemistry read. "Chemistry is not always romantic, it's an ease. Can you talk to this person easily? And that, I knew, happened. I was like, ‘We can really talk to each other.'" You can watch their audition on Dewan’s YouTube channel; she’s all giggles and smiles and he’s serving that low-key swagger. “Watching the video, it’s like, ‘Oh, look at them. They’re just easy.'" I pipe in with, "In a couple of years, they’ll be married," and her smile freezes for just a second before she shakes off the hint of sadness.
Matrimony didn’t stifle their fun; they talked up their sex lives to People, and on their raucous Lip Sync Battle appearances, commentator Chrissy Teigen jumped up and down at the mere sight of them. She wasn’t alone; we all jumped up and down about them. They were to redefine Hollywood marriage as a sexy partnership between equals—and for nine years, they did, but in the end, they walked off into two different sunsets.
Somehow, in the aftermath of the separation, something curious has happened. Dewan’s spotlight has gotten stronger, but on her own merits. Not because she’s no longer Tatum’s wife.
"The moves I'm making are completely not related to my marriage or separation, interestingly enough. I was always very happy being a wife," Dewan says, but bigger questions were looming, like "'Who are you? What do you want to give to the world? What excites you?' Those feelings started bubbling up for me, naturally… so I really wanted to expand my life, and myself. And that was my journey, no one else's." I ask her how it feels to be on her own, and she answers sweetly: "I feel a sense of joy and freedom and excitement, truly, about a new chapter in my life. And I have no attachments to how that's going to look, or what that's going to be. I feel really open, and I feel hopeful."
Dewan seems invested in projecting nothing less than shimmering positivity around this break-up. She never confesses to any crying jags or playing "Nothing Compares 2 U" on repeat or any other routine break-up behaviors, in the past or present. She uses the word vulnerability exactly once, and otherwise brightly announces it as "a new normal where there is a lot of love" as she and Channing learn to co-parent with a new—as she calls it—flow. "We’re just getting used to it. We're in a very positive energy together, trying to be the best parents to Everly. We support each other."
This is the way a lot of Hollywood ladies speak—a New Witch tongue fresh from therapy and the spa—and as a double Sagittarius with a Pisces moon, I am able to translate her language. Dewan is a self-described “spiritual nut”: a lover of crystals—she says her house is covered in all kinds—and she tells me about her goddess circle, which is a gathering of women friends where they all announce their intentions and “talk about what we’re going through,” before a shaman leads them through a group meditation with sound bowls and (more) crystals. Deprecatingly, she says, "I'm aware how weird that sounds… It’s the whole LA hippie experience." But for real, if you’re not doing something like a goddess circle on the regular, why even live here? LA is good for (at least!) two things: access to beautiful avocados and practicing everyday witchcraft with your closest girlfriends.
The Blonds dress, Leg Avenue fishnets, Atelier Michalsky black boots, Stefere earrings, Le Vian diamond circle earring, Le Vian diamond gold ring, Hearts on Fire diamond ring.
Dewan is clear that she wants to electrify her purpose: "to confront the unknown." There’s no doubt that her best friend, actress Emmanuelle Chriqui, and her other friends in the goddess circle helped her find the courage to step into that raw mystery. "At the end of the day, the whole point is women coming together, and supporting each other, and connecting, and bonding. We have these crazy lives… I think as I've gotten older, it sounds cliché, but it’s more important to have a really solid group of girls that are there for me, who get me."
Two years ago, Dewan says a light came on about what kind of life she wanted to claim. The circumstances are pretty Eat Pray Love: She was in Peru working with a non-profit called Plant Med. There was an Amazonian tribe. An eco-lodge. She came back thinking, "Alright, let's make your life the best version of your life that it can be. Let's think broader. Let's think bigger." That expansion is still in progress, but so far, "I expanded, I grew up, I matured. I'm a very ambitious, passionate person. And when an idea comes in, and once you see the light, it's really hard to un-see the light."
Alexandre Vauthier dress, Falke tights, Giuseppe Zanotti wedges, Le Vian diamond earrings, Le Vian diamond gold ring, Hearts on Fire diamond ring.
Her ability to face the unknown has deep roots in her life. Raised by a single mom who worked as a pharmaceutical rep, Dewan moved around all throughout her childhood. She ticks off all the places she lived before 18: Connecticut, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Texas, Baltimore again, Texas once again for high school, plus summertime visits to Dad (who remarried and had three more sons), who moved up and down California.
"I was always the new kid," she says with amused mortification. "Every single city I moved to, the first day of school was such an event for me because I had no idea who anyone was… I'd walk into these classrooms, and it was literally like the record stopped. And they were like, 'Who's this fresh meat?' Everyone else was in No Fear T-shirts and Doc Martens, I'll never forget. And here I come in, in my matching Limited Too outfit with my hair all done, the gel blush. I was so girly."
The one constant was dance. She was the new girl at all the dance studios, too, but within a few weeks, she’d stand out for the right reasons. Movement and music became her preferred language ("I was able to express my emotions through music way more than I could communicate as a person," she says), and in a way, Dewan’s first family formed through dance. But Janet Jackson’s touring tribe was just as dysfunctional as any other: "Tour life is intense. I mean, there's a lot of power struggles that go on. There's a lot of drama. You become this family that at times feels dysfunctional, but then you're a family. You're stuck on a tour bus together. All kinds of life lessons happened for me from 19 to 21. But I definitely left that tour being like, 'Okay, I've grown up.' Some real highs, and some real lows. But I grew up." At Jackson’s personal request—"she called me in her little soft voice"—Dewan recently joined other legacy dancers from Jackson’s tours for a reunion at the Hollywood Bowl. The militaristic moves for "Rhythm Nation" is still "one of the hardest dances I’ve ever done… it was the best night ever."
Other experiences early on forced Dewan to set firm boundaries. At 17, she says she had to fend off the advances of a "well-known choreographer." After she flatly rejected him, she went home and told the situation to her mother, in tears, wondering if she had just ruined her career. "What it does is creates this insecurity in women. My mother said, 'Jenna, no, you did the right thing. You should always listen to yourself. Don’t ever do anything you’re uncomfortable with for the sake of a job.'"
After dancing for Janet, Ricky Martin, N’Sync, and then Justin Timberlake (she recently confirmed to Andy Cohen that they briefly dated after his break-up with Britney, but she wasn’t the wedge between them), Dewan’s attentions turned to acting. On her very first audition, she nabbed the titular role for Tamara, a cheesy horror movie where her Baby Spice coo is well-deployed in wink-wink lines like, "This party should be killer." A year later came Step Up, which should’ve launched her into the stratosphere. But Dewan wasn’t offering what Hollywood wanted.
Walk of Shame jacket and top, Queenie Cao shorts, Falke tights, Giuseppe Zanotti shoes, Gilan diamond earrings, Le Vian diamond earrings, Le Vian diamond ring, Hearts on Fire diamond ring.
"Even though I was in a hit dance movie, all of a sudden my agents were telling me to go into auditions as, 'You're not a dancer, you're an actress. That’s all you do.' It was so weird," because she’d just been celebrated for being a hybrid force. "They were just trying to fit me into this thing, and I really didn't fit into that box."
The Not Enough's and Too Much's started piling up—not sexy enough, too sexy, too glam, not ethnic enough, not girl-next-door material, but most of all, can't you try to be a serious actress like Natalie Portman? "I didn't have the self-awareness to understand. I was really young. I was 26, 27, 28, around there. So I was like, 'I don't know who I am.'"
Then the tide turned. Shows like So You Think You Can Dance, Dancing with the Stars, and Glee made being a dancer and a musical theater nerd cool again. Just as she was developing her own dance competition show, Dewan was offered World of Dance and everything cracked open. Watch Dewan interact with Lopez, who also started as a dancer, and it’s clear she’s found a mentor who embodies what she wants to be, even as she knows she must define it for herself. "She's a hard worker. She takes care of herself. She doesn't go out and drink. She's just a really beautiful, empowered woman who's also a great mother."
Dewan, newly a solo mom (though Tatum is devoted to doing his part in co-parenting), is as committed to expanding Everly’s sense of self as she is her own. "She's like a little mirror for me. She's so willful that she kind of inspires me to get clear and more willful in my own life." Already, Everly’s ambitious nature is clear: "If she's not running her own business, or ruling the world, I have failed as a mother" which doesn’t mean Dewan wants to raise a little business machine. Dewan encourages her to embrace her free spirit: to have big cries, big feelings and if she wants to wear all purple for a year, no problem—regardless of what other moms might think. "I just bought a lot of purple leggings and a lot of purple tops."
Nedo dress, Majesty glove, Jennifer Fisher earrings, Falke tights, Giuseppe Zanotti wedges, Gilan diamond earrings, Le Vian diamond ring, Hearts on fire ring.
She also says that becoming a mother took away a good chunk of fear about being a lasting fixture in Hollywood: "Whether you try and hide it or not, most actresses and actors have a certain sense of anxious desperation about what their next job is. As soon as I had Everly, it went away. I had this freedom of, 'Well, I could never work another day in my life, and I have a purpose.'" Her newfound security worked like a magnet: "The irony is, that deep surrender brought so much opportunity and projects my way."
Surrendering at the deepest levels means making room for the big dreams to come in. Dewan is patiently awaiting all that’s coming for her, relying on her goddess circle and a meditative technique called holographic breathing. "You use your breath to sort of ground you and open up and feel." What she’s feeling in those still moments has been hard-won. "It is a new dawn," she says. "There is a joy and there is a vulnerability to it. But I have a lot of hope for what the new chapter of my life will be."
Photography by Robin Harper; Video Directed by Valerie Schenkman; Styling by William Graper; Fashion Director Kerry Pieri; Hair by Kristin Ess using Kristin Ess Hair; Makeup by Denika Bedrossian using Marc Jacobs Beauty; Manicure by Christina Aviles at Opus Beauty using Essentiel by Adele; Digital Design by Perri Tomkiewicz & Aaron Halevy; Photo Production by Oona Wally & Suze Lee; Video Production by Kathryn Rice
If Jenna Dewan was sitting down to her last meal on earth, what would it be?Watch her play 'The Last 5' with BAZAAR below:
Margaret Wappler has written for Rolling Stone, Elle, Cosmo, The New York Times, and several other publications. Her debut novel, Neon Green, was praised as "witty and entertaining" by the Los Angeles Times and was a finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. She lives in Los Angeles and can be heard weekly on the pop culture podcast, Pop Rocket.
