She lit up MTV with a single hit song in 2001 and then disappeared. Willa
Ford doesn't "Wanna Be Bad" anymore — but how'd this one hit wonder go
from losing all her cool to flipping high end homes… with Scott Disick?
Did 9/11 ruin her career? In 2017, Willa Ford appeared
to claim that the 9/11 terror attacks were inadvertently responsible for her second single,
"Did 'Ya Understand That," not catching on with listeners. Ford put her bizarre case
forward in an interview with Billboard 16 years later, telling the outlet:
"A lot of people don't realize this, but my second single was released on September 11,
2001. Everything that happened that day froze; the world stood still, as it should have. My
second single didn't do well because anything that launched that day kind of got canned."
Following a backlash from social media, however,
Ford told People that her comments had been wildly misconstrued, and said:
"During the past day, other news outlets have taken the liberty to say that I somehow blamed
9/11 for my song not taking off... this could not be further from the truth."
Ford went on to add: "It was meant to be an
inspirational piece about how the universe sent me in a new and different direction,
one that has led me to success and joy in other areas of my personal and professional life."
Interior designer Watch out Joanna Gaines and every
other interior designer who displays their talents on reality TV. There's a new house makeover queen
in town and it's a woman whose previous career doesn't exactly scream 'home furnishings.' Yes,
in the early 2010s, Willa Ford started her own interior design company, WFord Interiors.
"If you would've asked me 18 years ago, would I
be sitting here talking about interior design, I would've said, 'Yeah, right."
As Ford told W Magazine, her interior design company was
something she initially managed to balance with the acting work she
had taken on after her music career flamed out. Ford said to the outlet:
"I started doing friends and clients started coming from that. At one point,
I was on a film shoot and the producers approached me to say,
'Hey, we bought a house together, we'd love for you to do it.' It dawned on
me that I was fulfilled in the need for creating art by designing these homes."
From there, Ford's interior design business took off. She told W:
"I started getting busy enough,
and one thing led to the next and it became a bonafide firm within just a few years."
Music is now a hobby Willa Ford hasn't officially
released anything as a pop star since 2014's "Rock Tonight."
"The hot shorts have been hung up."
But that doesn't mean she's entirely abandoned her musical talents. The former MTV-favorite
now simply sings and records for fun. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in 2019,
Ford revealed that she was asked to head to Nashville to work with a number of songwriters,
an invitation which she admits was largely based on her country-sounding name. The interior
designer added that she enjoyed the experience more than she expected, telling the outlet:
"It's therapeutic to get some things off your chest. I loved getting back to it,
especially in a different genre. But I believe that music is a full-time job as well. You've
got to constantly be flexing that muscle. I just do it and dabble in it for fun."
​​So will Ford ever allow her fans to hear the fruits of these country music
sessions? Well, it seems unlikely. Ford added,
"The demos are banked, but don't expect to hear them anytime soon!"
Busy working with Scott Disick
Following her unlikely pivot into interior design, Willa Ford attracted the attention
of Scott Disick, who invited her to appear as a regular on his own unlikely pivot into
house-renovating entertainment, Flip It Like Disick. But the former pop
star admits she didn't accept straight away. Speaking to People in 2019, Ford revealed,
"Scott and I had previously worked on a smaller project,
then we reconnected. He called and told me that he was flipping homes and how there
was going to be a show involved. He asked if I felt comfortable being a part of it.
After thinking long and hard about it, I knew it was a fantastic opportunity."
Ford also told Daily Mail that she was surprised
by how much different Disick is in person to his reputation. She told the outlet:
"I don't know if it comes with age or with maturity, but he's definitively different to what
may be anticipated by fans of the Kardashians. He's a business man behind closed doors."
Happily married
Back in the 2000s, Willa Ford found herself gracing the tabloids more than she did MTV
thanks to an eventful love life in which she was linked to a number of celebs. Indeed, Backstreet
Boys pin-up Nick Carter, Dancing with the Stars favorite Maksim Chmerkovskiy and UFC light
heavyweight champ Chuck Liddell were all rumored or reported to have dated Ford in her heyday.
Ford went on to marry Mike Modano in 2007. Modano played for the former NHL [N-H-L] team,
the Minnesota North Stars, which became the Dallas Stars in 1993, whom he also played for. However,
the pair divorced five years later. But since 2015, Ford's love life appears to have been
drama-free. That was the year, of course, that she walked down the aisle with another sportsman,
ex-Tampa Bay Buccaneers linebacker Ryan Nece. And the footballer-turned-businessman rarely
stops gushing about his other half on Instagram. For instance, in 2021 he wrote on Instagram:
"She makes looking good, look easy."
Became a mother Just a year after they walked down
the aisle together, Willa Ford and Ryan Nece became parents for the first time. Ford gave
birth to son Elijah at Los Angeles' Cedars-Sinai Hospital in 2016. As she told People during her
pregnancy, the former pop star had decided to keep the sex of the baby as a surprise:
"I think it's a really great light at the end of the tunnel when you're in labor.
You're going to find out what this baby is, [and it] just gives you a little extra motivation."
Although Ford wrongly predicted she was having a girl, she was still incredibly
happy to welcome a boy into the world. Shortly after becoming a mom, she tweeted,
"There is no greater love then what I feel for our little boy
and my husband Ryan. Watching them together makes my heart explode."
Low-budget acting work
Willa Ford did add to her filmography in the 2010s, but largely with work that no
doubt flew under most of the public's radar. In 2016, for example, she appeared alongside
the likes of Cody Christian and Jonathan Bennett in Submerged, an abduction thriller which went
straight-to-DVD. Before that, Ford appeared in several other films that bypassed cinemas,
including the bank robbery tale Checkmate, the redemption drama Fighting Demons,
and the thriller The Nurse. But since playing attorney Carrie Evans in 2016's A Father's Secret,
the multi-talent appears to have put her acting career on hold.
So will Ford ever return to her previous thespian ways? Well,
it seems unlikely. In a 2019 chat with The Hollywood Reporter,
the one-hit wonder recalled the moment she realized Hollywood life was no longer for her:
"Even though I was acting, I wasn't creating. I wasn't writing the scripts. I was just playing
the characters. So I was designing on the side and absolutely loved it. [...] Before I knew it,
it took over all my time. And I decided to stop acting altogether."
Reluctant to return to spotlight For the three years in between her
performance in 2016's survival thriller Submerged and her debut on reality show Flip It Like Disick,
Willa Ford appeared to have disappeared off the face of the Earth. And having taken such
a lengthy break from the spotlight, the former pop star was initially reluctant to return to
it. In an interview with Glamour, Ford revealed how she and husband Ryan Nece
discussed the implications of re-entering the fame game once again. She recalled saying,
"I'll be putting myself on display for the good, the bad, and the
ugly. Not everyone is going to love you, and that can hurt sometimes. And then there's the
added part of I have an incredible little boy, and my time is so valuable as it is."
"My… my time is very precious these days."
After talking things over further with her company,
Ford decided to accept Disick's invitation to join his unlikely
pivot into home renovation TV. But as she told ET, there was one stipulation:
"So my big thing with Scott is that we just needed him to know I needed
the authenticity of what we did as a company to come across. And
as long as that's what we were doing, then I was okay with doing the show."
Her focus is authenticity
Willa Ford may have returned to our screens as an interior designer on Scott Disick's
E! show Flip It Like Disick. But unlike its host, and the rest of the Kardashian family
he used to be a part of, the former pop star isn't interested in creating headlines for
the sake of it. When asked by W Magazine whether she ever plays up to the cameras,
Ford insisted that she only ever acts as herself. She told the outlet:
"I try to be pretty authentic. Every once and a while they'll ask us to go back and walk
through a door again, but obviously that stuff happens. Real reactions, real life relationships,
all that is based in reality. I really want to be authentic with the audience."
And that quest for authenticity doesn't just stop with her behavior, either. Ford told W,
"So you'll see me some days without makeup on, and I'm really okay with
that. You'll see me other days where I'm completely done up. Going into
this process I wanted to represent interior designers in a way that it is authentic."
Slow to embrace pop past There's a reason why you never
see Willa Ford's name on any of those nostalgia pop tours that for one night
only allows millennials to relive their youth. The singer spent years trying to forget that
her biggest single never even existed. "I Wanna Be Bad" reached No. 22 on the Hot 100 in 2001,
and remains Ford's only hit. But after abandoning her pop career,
the interior designer found it hard to listen to ever again. She told Glamour in 2019:
"I went through a phase where I was like, 'Oh my God, I'm so embarrassed.'
It was weird to hear. If I was in a wedding, they'd always request it."
However, the former MTV regular can now appreciate its dance-pop joys. She explained to Glamour,
"How many people in the world have not only had
a hit single but also wrote it? I worked really hard for that."
Ford also revealed that the song came as an act of defiance against those guiding her career:
"I remember one day I was like, 'I'm going to do the opposite of what they're telling me.' If
somebody gives me an authority figure, I'm like, 'Let me go the other way.'"
"I wanted to be in control of the yes and the no that was said to me."
Some design work is secret
Willa Ford has worked with a whole host of celebrities since her pivot from actor to interior
designer including DJ Steve Aoki and rapper French Montana, both of whom were quite happy to show off
their homes on Flip It Like Disick. But not every individual with enough spare cash to hire a former
pop star to give their houses a new lease of life wants to be so public. In an interview with The
Hollywood Reporter, Ford explained that many of those she's worked for aren't interested in
opening up their pads on camera. When asked about her roster, the star told the outlet:
"I can only give a few names... But the truth is I have billionaire clients,
so I'm super lucky. People ask me, 'Oh, you get to work with celebrities?' Yeah, I do,
and it's fun — but those billionaires are the ones that are really fun to work with."
Of course, not everyone who employs Ford is aware of her MTV past. But she does
still get recognized from time to time. She recalled to The Hollywood Reporter:
"There was this one project. I took a meeting for a Newport kitchen,
and the guy's wife was sitting there while I was talking and was just like, 'Oh my god,
that is Willa Ford who is designing our kitchen. I'm trying to process this.' It was really funny."