Adele Told Oprah Winfrey Her Dad Gave Her "Zero Expectations"

(Image credit: Getty/CBS Photo Archive)

published 15 November 2021

Adele and her father, Mark Evans, were estranged for most of the singer's life. Evans left Adele's mom when their daughter was a toddler, and the star suffered greatly as a result.

Speaking to Oprah Winfrey as part of the Adele: One Night Only special, which aired on Nov. 14 on CBS, Adele said her father's "absolute lack of presence and effort" was her "biggest wound" from childhood (via BBC).

Heartbreakingly, Adele credits this wounded relationship with her difficulty in romantic relationships over the years. "I had absolutely zero expectations of anybody, because I learned not to have them through my dad," she told Winfrey. "He was the reason I haven't fully accessed what it is to be in a loving, loving relationship with somebody."

Evans' behavior towards Adele also influenced her ideas of marriage, love and family, and explains why the idea of divorcing felt like such a failure for the singer. "I've been obsessed with a nuclear family my whole life because I never came from one," she said."From a very young age [I] promised myself that, when I had kids, we'd stay together. And I tried for a really, really long time."

But the singer realized she wasn't happy in her marriage to Simon Konecki, with whom she shares son Angelo, and it eventually became clear that they needed to separate, however painful that would be. "I take marriage very seriously... and it seems like I don't now," she said. "Almost like I disrespected it by getting married and then divorced so quickly. I'm embarrassed because it was so quick." The divorce was finalized in 2021, but Adele and Konecki had separated in 2018—the year they got married.

Happily, Adele was able to bridge some gaps in her relationship to her father in the last three years before his death earlier in 2021. He even got to listen to her new album over video chat. "His favorites were all of my favorites, which was amazing, and he was proud of me for doing it," she said. "So it was it was very, very healing [and] when he died, it was literally like the wound closed up."

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Iris Goldsztajn is a London-based journalist, editor and author. She is the morning editor at Marie Claire, and her work has appeared in the likes of British Vogue, InStyle, Cosmopolitan, Refinery29 and SELF. Iris writes about everything from celebrity news and relationship advice to the pitfalls of diet culture and the joys of exercise. She has many opinions on Harry Styles, and can typically be found eating her body weight in cheap chocolate.