The Extreme Lengths John Legend Goes To Entertain Luna Are Peak Dad — EXCLUSIVE
John Legend and Chrissy Teigen are the internet's favorite parents. When fans aren't busy crying laughing over Teigen's tweets, their collective hearts are melting when the couple shares new photos and videos of their two little ones. So what does an EGOT winner do to entertain his kids? It must be quite a show, right? John Legend's comments about the things he does to entertain Luna are peak dad behavior. The most heartwarming part? He learned it from his own father.
Legend tells me in an exclusive interview with Elite Daily that he pulls inspiration from his own childhood when finding ways to entertain Luna in the moment. "I find myself, as a dad now, finding random places to dance just to entertain my daughter," he says. "And now I realize why my dad did it, cause he would do it too. He would play drums on the steering wheel while we were driving places and do little car dances. I just feel like I find more opportunities to dance to entertain my daughter now."
Chrissy Teigen echoed the same sentiment in a previous interview with Elite Daily. She revealed that, during the production phase of Legend's upcoming Christmas album, Legend would take their daughter to the studio with him so she could get some quality time with dad before being tucked into bed, but mostly so she could be the seal of approval on every song on the album. So whether it's dancing around the house or in the car, letting her be the tastemaker on a holiday album, or coming up with a sweet song to sing her while they're changing her diaper, little Luna Stephens is constantly being entertained by her parents. (Miles, according to Teigen, is still so young that he doesn't need as much entertainment, but they're prepared for when that time comes.)
I want to make the world more beautiful and more loving and connect us more. And I think if I just keep doing that, I'm going to be happy and I'll feel like I've had a great career.
Now, Legend is taking his #dadmoves and using them for a good cause. John Legend and ballerina-turned-actress Misty Copeland have teamed up on a campaign called Drink Good Do Good.
Non-profit organization Wholesome Wave has joined forces with Naked Juice to create a program aimed at helping people from food-insecure homes get easier access to fresh fruits and vegetables. Food-insecure, according to Wholesome Wave founder Michel Nischan, is a term used to describe people who are "worrying about where their next meal is going to come from, or if they’re going to be able to get enough meals on the table to feed their family."
Legend and Copeland, along with Wholesome Wave and Naked Juice, have created the Shopping Cart Dance in order to help raise funds for the Drink Good Do Good campaign. For each photo or video posted of the Shopping Cart Dance with the #FillYourCartForGood hashtag from now until Nov. 4, Naked Juice will donate $100 (the equivalent of a cart full of fresh produce) to Wholesome Wave. The funds will then be used in food stamp programs like Wholesome Wave's SNAP card program.
Legend tells me it's so important to put this issue on peoples' radars because it's a largely unknown struggle. According to Nischan, 30 million people in the United States are food-insecure, and 60 percent of Americans aren't even aware it's an issue. That's where Legend and Copeland come in. "If it's not affecting you, you know, you can be in your own little silo," Legend tells me. "You can have your group of friends, you can be in your neighborhood and you don't see what your neighbor across town is going through."
He continues,
I grew up around people who were on food stamps and people who were living week-to-week, day-to-day sometimes, to get the kinds of food they needed. And if you don't live in that setting, you don't realize that so many people are going through this and it's easy to kind of ensconce yourself, or like you know, shelter yourself from that reality.
Just like he learned by observation from his own father, Legend is hoping that through the example he sets through his work, Luna and Miles will learn to give back and do their part to make the world a better place. He tells me that the use of the Shopping Cart Dance in the Drink Good Do Good campaign is helping to do just that because it highlights social media's unique capability to connect people all around the world. "The greatest thing about it is that it's very democratic," he says. "It's very open to everybody. You don't have to be professional like Misty is, you can just be a terrible dancer like me. Anybody can do it." He adds that contributing to something that's bigger than yourself is something he's always trying to do with his work, whether it's through his philanthropic efforts or his own art.
Legend won an Oscar in 2015 thanks to this same sentiment. In fact, a lot of the awards he received that contributed to his EGOT status fall along the lines of contributing to something bigger than yourself. His song "Glory," the anthem for the 2014 film Selma, was a song about the civil rights movement of the 1960s. He won a Tony for co-producing August Wilson's Jitney, a play that delves into the gentrification of the Hill District of Pittsburgh in the '70s through the eyes of black cab drivers, on Broadway in 2017. And he won an Emmy in 2018 for co-producing Jesus Christ Superstar Live In Concert — a production that was lauded for its modern take on the 1970s story.
When asked if there's any career goal he hasn't reached yet now that he's officially the second youngest and first black man ever to reach EGOT status (Frozen's Robert Lopez has EGOT'd twice and is just a few months younger than Legend), he says he wasn't trying to become one in the first place. "This wasn't even a thing I thought I was trying to do at first," he tells me. "I really just set out to make music that I was really proud of and that I thought would move people and make the world a little more beautiful." He continues, "And then through all the other art that I produce or collaborate with other people to make, I want to make the world more beautiful and more loving and connect us more. And I think if I just keep doing that, I'm going to be happy and I'll feel like I've had a great career."
