RIHANNA: GREAT EXPECTATIONS

THE STAR HAS A BABY ON BOARD, A BIG SCREEN ROLE AND MUSIC ON HER MIND

-  Jennie Noonan

Heavily pregnant with her second baby, Rihanna surprised fans at CinemaCon in April 2023 by announcing she was going to voice the role of Smurfette in the new animated Smurfs movie, also starring John Goodman, James Corden and Octavia Spencer.

“I tried to get the Papa Smurf part, but it didn’t work out,” she joked on the Las Vegas stage, announcing she also serves as a producer and musical contributor on the movie. “Getting to do animation is a fun journey for me. I’m usually the front and centre of everything with my likeness. But this was fun - I got to imagine, I got to show up in my pyjamas in my third trimester and be a blue badass ...

I hope this gives me a little bit of cool points with my kids one day.” The star, now mum to two sons - RZA, born in May 2022, and Riot, who arrived in August 2023 - will have one more kid to score cool points with, as she is expecting her third baby with her partner, rapper A$AP Rocky. Rihanna revealed her latest pregnancy in a bump-hugging Marc Jacobs look at the Met Gala on May 5. "It's time that we show the people what we was cooking up," Rocky told reporters on his way into the event. "And I'm glad everybody's happy for us 'cause we definitely happy, you know."

The big news came a few months after Rocky, 36, whose legal name is Rakim Mayers, was acquitted in his felony assault trial in February, after he was accused of firing a semiautomatic handgun at his former friend A$AP Relli during an altercation in 2021. The rapper, who risked more than 24 years' jail time if convicted, was supported by Rihanna and their children at the trial, during which his defence maintained it was a prop gun that was fired. "Needless to say it has been a great couple of months for the family!" Rocky's lawyer Joe Tacopina told People magazine. "God is smiling on them!"