One imagines it will be hard for the Duchess of Sussex—or, well, anyone for that matter—to top the day she had on Wednesday. In New York City for a five-night trip, Meghan Markle was thrown an extremely fancy baby shower at the penthouse of the luxe Mark hotel, attended by her closest friends and co-hosted by Serena Williams and Amal Clooney. And then—and then!—later that day, during the BRIT Awards (the British equivalent of the Grammys), Beyoncé and Jay-Z accepted an award via a pre-recorded video, in which the Mona Lisa imagery, of their recent “Apeshit” video, was replaced with a portrait of Meghan. Beyoncé explained the tribute on her Instagram account, writing, “In honor of Black History Month, we bow down to one of our Melanated Monas. Congrats on your pregnancy! We wish you so much joy.” (There was also a Meghan tribute posted on Beyoncé’s Web site.)
The painting of Meghan—initially commissioned for the cover of national sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma’s Summer 2018 alumni magazine (Meghan was a Kappa when she attended Northwestern University)—was created by Tim O’Brien, a Brooklyn-based illustrator and portraitist who has been published in a range of magazines, including Time, Rolling Stone, GQ, National Geographic, and New York magazine. He has won many awards as well, and has more than a dozen paintings in the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. Per his biography, he “has a knack for pop culture, often infusing it into artistic visions that simultaneously reveal its strangeness and familiarity.”
Vanity Fair spoke to O’Brien on Wednesday evening to discuss his reaction to his work being used in this manner, the way the painting came about, and his feelings about the Carters not calling to get the rights to the image.
Vanity Fair: How did you initially find out Beyoncé and Jay-Z had used your illustration? Was it a flood of messages?
Tim O’Brien: Yeah, it just . . . I saw Instagram started to get crazy, and Twitter went crazy. I think it happened right at the moment the video played, I guess. And then I started getting contact from . . . I have a Web site and sell prints of it. And so suddenly a bunch of print orders came in. [Ed: O’Brien says a fulfillment company makes the prints and that they will not sell out, as “they’ll just make as many as they can.”]
Did you have any advance warning that this was going to be happening? Or did it just come out of nowhere?
Yeah, it came out of nowhere. They didn’t contact me; they didn’t acquire the rights to it. I had no idea about it.
So what was your initial reaction when you did see what had happened?
Well, I’m a businessperson. So part of these things . . . that’s a usage. But I’m torn, because I respect Beyoncé as an artist so much. And I know that the publicity that kind of usage can provide is valuable. So I’m pretty sure it’ll be a positive thing no matter what. And it’s not like she made money doing this video. It was done as a backdrop for receiving an award. So I feel like it was a . . . I don’t feel too upset about it. [Ed: Vanity Fair has reached out to the Carters’ rep for comment.]
Is there any sort of legal claim you would try to make or anything like that?
I might be able to. I’m not sure I would do that. But in this case, there’s not a lot to gain. You have to recognize when something is valuable, has other value, and I think it has other value.
Could you talk a little bit about the initial commission and how it come about, this idea? Did the Kappa Kappa Gamma magazine reach out to you?
Two designers out of Austin, Texas, Erin Mayes and Kate Collins, they contacted me and said they were commissioning a cover for The Key, this magazine. They had pretty much decided what it was going to be, and we started to talk about the cover, and that it would be a princess. That she’d still have to look like her. They didn’t want her stylized in any way. So, I did a bunch of sketches, and refining all the different things she was wearing. And then finally got approval, and then I did the painting, an oil painting.
How long did that whole process take you to create it?
The sketch process is probably about a week, and then the painting several days.
Were you very familiar with Meghan and her global fame at that point when you took on the assignment?
Yeah, of course. I was aware of all the different ways that she was a new thing for England, and I was already intrigued by her. So it was an opportunity to make an interesting cover. And it came out, and then that was it. Then it sort of was reborn today.
Did you get feedback when it did initially come out?
About average feedback. It didn’t go viral or anything. There were some people who were members of the sorority who reached out, but it did nothing crazy. I mean, any time a celebrity touches something it sort of turns to gold.
You mentioned that your Instagram and everything are blowing up. What kind of feedback have you been getting?
Well, everyone loves Beyoncé, first of all. And so there are tons of those kinds of things on Instagram. But then there’s people who are fans of Meghan. There’s a bit of . . . I don’t know the opinion of Meghan in England. But I imagine just like any other country, there a back-and-forth about anybody, but mostly the comments on my social media have been positive.
And it was the day of her baby shower today as well, so it’s a celebratory kind of day.
[Laughing] Yeah, and no one invited me anywhere.
Well, maybe somehow this will be parlayed into, I don’t know, her next baby shower or something, and you can do an in-person portrait.
Right.
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