Nutritionist, ‘Playboy’ cover star and national sweetheart Rosanna Davison gets married in two weeks’ time and she chose LIFE to do her official wedding-lingerie shoot
Liadan Hynes has worked with Rosie for 10 years and on more than 18 cover-story shoots for LIFE magazine, styling her as everything from Santa’s little helper to the Virgin Mary. In her final big interview as a single person, Rosanna shares her pre-wedding excitement, as Liadan recalls the young girl she has seen grow into a woman in the public eye, through break-ups, wild phases and even a tour of the country, where a mobbed Rosie had a smile and pleasant word for everyone she met . Photography by Kip Carroll.
Rosanna Davison, the closest thing we have to a national sweetheart, is getting married in two weeks’ time. And, unlike most brides-to-be, she is feeling very chilled out about the whole affair. But then, she is a former Miss World, a virtuoso of living one’s life in the public eye, and of always maintaining an immaculately perfectionist level of appearance and behaviour. There are no pre-wedding nerves on display, or last-minute stress over all those tiny details. In fact, Rosanna has never seemed more relaxed, chilled out and genuinely happy.
During the 10 years of LIFE, I’ve worked on 18 cover stories with Rosanna. More than anyone else, she has been a poster girl for LIFE. Over the years, she’s done everything for us, from dressing as a nun, through staging a riotous near-orgy in Krystle nightclub with her friends and posing as Santa’s little helper, to dressing up with fiance, Wes Quirke, as Mary and Joseph.
In the last two months, I’ve done two shoots with her and, on both occasions, she was her usual, generally unruffled self. When we spoke for this interview, Rosanna was immersed in the last-minute wedding details, but still remained totally unfazed.
I once spent three days in a car with Rosanna Davison. We were touring Ireland for a LIFE feature, a sort of light-hearted State of the Nation. I remember being struck by how little Rosanna had travelled in Ireland. When we hit a nice beach, say, her comparisons were all Caribbean.
I learnt several things on that trip about the girl who, almost alone, genuinely could lay claim to that most overused title: Ireland’s top model. The self-confessed former “tomboy”, who told me she’d almost no interest in make-up before winning the Miss World title at the age of 19, may be the most well-groomed person one could ever meet.
Five o’clock starts in the back end of west Galway for breakfast with a bean an ti, or to head out on a fishing trip in Dingle in the still-dark morning, were faced by an immaculately groomed Rosie in full make-up. But, then, I suppose when you’re constantly under scrutiny, you become less inclined to offer up the barefaced, unadorned version of yourself for public consumption. Being in Miss World, “where they all trowelled it on”, she says now, set a certain standard.
Growing up, Rosanna was the sporty type – athletics captain of her school in fifth and sixth year; training some of the younger girls in 100m hurdles and the high jump. “I got a pony when I was 12,” she tells me now. “I was obsessed with horses. I was at my happiest in my jodhpurs, mucking out the stable. I was never into grooming. I suppose I’ve become into it because I’ve had to. Deep down, I’m a tomboy.
“Funnily enough, I was probably more confident in my appearance before Miss World,” she recalls. “Because, as an 18-year-old, I didn’t really think about how I looked or what people thought of me. I just did my thing and enjoyed my life. Obviously, I still very much enjoy my life, but I think, if you’re somebody in the public eye who is scrutinised, to a certain extent, for how you look and what you’re wearing, then it does make you more self-critical. And your standards get very high in terms of how you look. Although I have got much better. Say five years ago, I was much more self-critical.”
What helped her become less critical? “Just growing up and realising that you can’t please everybody all the time,” she says. “And life’s too short to actually worry about what people are thinking.
“Turning 30 recently has been very big,” she adds. “I’m very ready for 30. I loved my 20s, but I’m ready for a new chapter.”
Lesson two from our road trip: Rosanna Davison’s not just another, interchangeable, blonde model who has managed to eke a career out of being a Z-list celebrity. See her out among her peers and it becomes clear that, for one thing, she’s physically almost a different species. It’s a mixture of her increasingly healthy lifestyle – she’s always enjoyed home-grown vegetables from her parents’ garden – and her love of sports.
Rosanna can’t remember the last time a week went by that she wasn’t in the gym, apart from on the rare occasion when she’s sick, and she follows a strict vegan diet, the adoption of which, three years ago, she says led to a huge increase in energy and sense of wellbeing, not to mention the dropping of a dress size.
Back on that LIFE road trip, teenagers in a Galway gaeltacht swarmed around her like a celebrity, shoving and pushing to stand beside her for a picture. She endured this patiently, and her California-standard, perfect physicality stood out a mile. She was taller, more toned, and with that can’t-be-faked real tan that the wealthy often seem to enjoy.
And, finally, Rosanna’s almost unrelentingly nice. Maybe it’s a facade, but spend three days in that close company with someone, racing around the country, trying to make it on time to the next appointment, while not getting lost; getting up at five in the morning, and then being thrust into huge groups of complete strangers to make nice, and, if someone has an unpleasant side, it’s bound to show.
The closest we got to any unpleasantness was a sort of tightly polite back and forth about the merits of a satnav. I was against it, on the basis that the back roads of Kerry aren’t up to it. Rosanna, of a younger generation, didn’t seem to have ever driven without it. Bar that, she put up with being pawed and glad-handed by enthusiastic teens, the attentions of various women clearly bursting with a mixture of excitement and envy at this physically fairly flawless creature, and the general shouts and leers of the public.
Rosanna is a good sport, and the only time she expressed anything of a remotely negative nature in the three days was her dislike of journalists being nice to her face and then writing nasty things about her. And, in fairness, who could blame her?
“Up until the age of 25, I used to be feisty, but now I’m totally chilled out. I’d find it hard to even get angry. I’m just much more relaxed,” she says. “But I’d be able to stand up for myself.”
The only time I’ve ever seen her in any way flustered was when she was unavoidably half an hour late due to traffic problems to a cover we shot a few weeks ago for LIFE’s 10th birthday. She was also feeling unwell, which was worrying her, as she had her hen party that weekend, and, as it was only a few weeks before her wedding, she was up to her eyes in last-minute planning. There was also a work trip to Germany to fit in that week. Most women would have been basket cases. Rosanna was just a little off form and quieter than usual.
Sometimes, with Rosanna, you get the feeling she’s never not on. Polite, friendly, never bad-tempered, up for a laugh. But decidedly on. What would her friends say she’s really like? “I’m probably more of a messer than people realise,” she says. “I love to laugh, and find silly things funny. I suppose I’ve a childish sense of humour.”
As someone who’s in the public eye, it’s important to know that your loved ones will look out for you. In a 2008 LIFE interview, her then boyfriend, now fiance, Wesley Quirke said, “I always have to remind her, ‘Don’t do that.’” To which Rosanna responded: “He’s always behind me, ready to pick me up off the floor,”
To this day, her closest group of friends are mostly made up of people she’s known since school or college. “Your school friends are the people who knew you when you were just a school kid, and you hadn’t gone on to do anything else,” she says now.
Does she feel conscious of always having to behave herself, even when she’s out with friends? “To a certain extent,” Rosanna says. “It’s hard to get me into a nightclub these days, let’s say. I’d prefer just a dinner party with friends. I’m past the age of dancing on tables, necking bottles of champagne anyway. I don’t know if that is something you get out of your system in your early 20s. I would be self-conscious now, to a certain extent. I wouldn’t be swearing loudly or anything, but I’d also want to be myself.”
She was very protected as a child, her dad’s singing career was “just a job”, but, since winning Miss World, Rosanna has essentially grown up in public. She talks a lot about being true to herself – was it hard to carve out a sincere identity, while living her life very much in the public?
“Being Miss World, I definitely had to behave myself, and be ladylike all the time,” she says. “So, from there, I had to figure out who I was and develop my personality. But I think it’s a challenge anyway, and it’s always a growing process for anybody in their 20s to do that. I really felt like, when I was around 27, I figured out who I was and what my beliefs are, and who my friends are. Up until 27, I really wasn’t sure.
“Your early 20s are hard because you’re trying to figure out who you are, what you want. What you want to do with your life,” says Rosanna. “And, then, for me anyway, it all settled down. When I was 26, I started my nutrition course and realised, actually, that this is what I love. I think just having a focus and a purpose, following your path. I think that just chills you out completely. It does fill you with positivity.
“But I made a conscious effort to weed out any negative parts, or negative energy in my life when I was around 26. I said, ‘Anything that doesn’t make me happy is out.’”
What brought her to that point? “Just a decision that I was over any drama with friends, that kind of thing,” Rosanna answers. “So, any people who caused drama or negativity for any reason, I just didn’t want to associate with any more. I think it’s an ongoing process, but it’s just about having the confidence to move away and not be so available to people.”
The very first time I met Rosanna, in late 2006, she was 22. She had recently split up with James Montgomery, her boyfriend of four years, got together with Wesley Quirke, and finished her studies in UCD. She was clearly ready to throw off the good-girl, beauty-queen image. The shoot we did at that time was quite punkish.
The split with James had only becaome public after she was spotted with Wes, even though the two relationships had not overlapped. So, the new couple were in the middle of something of a firestorm of media attention. I never met Rosanna with her ex, James, but with Wes, she was like an excited child. The chemistry between them was palpable. Rosanna had remarked that her previous relationship had descended into being “just friends”; seeing Wes and Rosanna together, you could never imagine them being just friends. “You have to do different things. Like, remember how to flirt,” she said at the time.
This time in her life was painted in the press as something of a rebellion. Indeed, to begin with, Wes, heir to Dr Quirkey’s Emporium, seemed like nothing more than a bad-boy indulgence, not someone who would eventually become husband material.
Actually, that wasn’t the dynamic at all. I worked on three shoots with the couple; the bebo-inspired shoot in Krystle nightclub in February 2007, a Twenties-inspired fashion shoot in September 2007, and the shoot that really launched Wesanna, in February 2008, where the pair staged an illicit hotel affair.
Rosanna always seemed like the one in charge; quietly confident in her working environment, patiently encouraging Wes, and almost taking him by the hand and showing him how to pose. You could see it at the bebo shoot in Krystle; surrounded by her boyfriend and their gang, Rosanna was so clearly the queen bee. As for Wes, a sweet, shy, polite boy in a professional situation, he was dating Miss World, for Christ’s sake.
Wes knew how lucky he was. They were “stuck together like glue,” he excitedly told LIFE at the time. “I’m mad about her. I never thought I could feel this way about a girl. There’s absolutely nothing about her that annoys me.”
Is she surprised that she met her husband when she was that young. Meeting your future husband at 22 is rare these days. “We’re both very much relationship people,” Rosanna now says. “And he had been in a five-year relationship before we met. He was single only a few months. So we both enjoy being in relationships. I suppose we just became the best of friends, and we still are. I really enjoy being in relationships, and I think I do better in relationships.”
Posing for the camera at the Krystle shoot in 2007, to the accompaniment of photographers shouting and loud music, the pair kissed with abandon, as their friends faked a party scene around them.
It was probably as hedonistic a phase as Rosanna had ever had in her life: finished college, new relationship, not yet with such an eye to posterity and the future, or her brand, free to indulge in a few more risque shoots, to put up pictures of her and her friends partying on bebo.
A little like Rosanna, Wes does not actually come across as remotely exhibitionist in person, but, at the time, in the throes of excitement at the new relationship, he was happy to share the spotlight. Nowadays, Rosanna says, he’s far more retiring.
“I look at the dynamic of my parents’ relationship, and my mum has no interest in working in the public eye,” Rosanna explains. “She’s really shy when it comes to photos. Then my dad’s the total opposite. So, between me and Wes, I’m the one who’s very comfortable in front of the camera, in the public eye and all that. And he’s very like my mum. He’s having palpitations about getting up at the wedding to do a speech. He hates getting in photos; he hates going to events; he hates any attention on him. Yet, in normal life, he’s very easy-going, very outgoing. But he just doesn’t like the idea of strangers looking at him, I suppose. So we’re very similar to my parents in that way. I suppose I use their friendship and their relationship as a good example to us. Being the best of friends, and confidantes.”
These days, Rosanna says she barely buys the papers, and has learnt to detach herself almost completely from what is written or said about her. So speculation about their engagement ran off her like water. “It was actually a surprise,” she says of getting engaged. “I mean, my friends had been saying for a while, ‘Oh, he’ll definitely ask you this New Year’s Eve.’ And New Year’s Eve came and went, and I was a little bit disappointed, but I just thought, ‘No, it’s obviously not the right time. My birthday’s in April. Maybe it’ll be then.’
“And then,” she says, “a week later, we were on the beach in Mauritius, and he went down on one knee and that was that.” He’d asked her dad the day before. “I think there were a few happy tears.”
Wes had bought the ring, having kept a ring from a barm brack that Rosanna had brought home at Halloween. “‘Oh, look what finger the ring fits on; it fits on my ring finger,’” she recalls joking. She left the ring on the counter, and the next day Wes took it and used it to size the engagement ring.
Recently, when we photographed the wedding-themed shoot you see on these pages, Rosanna was as chilled out as I think I’ve ever seen her. Full of chat about her wedding on the June bank holiday weekend, she was surprisingly unstressed about the whole thing, with not a hint of bridezilla. She chatted to our make-up artist about tips, but rather casually mused that she’d probably do her own make-up. “I’m just so excited. I’m, like, ‘Bring it on.’ The weeks feel like they’re dragging a bit.”
She was a little concerned about security issues. They had recently emailed guests password-protected save-the-date notices, and she was fervently hoping that details wouldn’t leak. While they’ve gone for a destination abroad, which, no doubt, helped in keeping their numbers under an impressively modest 100, they eschewed the expected Mauritius of Rosanna’s yearly family holiday. Ibiza is the chosen destination. “A sunshine wedding abroad, and a little bash at home afterwards for people who can’t make it over,” was how she described it.
Her dad might sing at the ceremony, or after dinner, which she says she’d love – he often sings unaccompanied at family events. “It’s always been beautiful,” Rosanna says. “That would be nice.”
When it came to planning the wedding, the lion’s share went to her, by choice, she laughs. “I’d say I’ve done 99 per cent of it. Because I want to, though. I haven’t prevented Wes or anything, but I’m more interested in the final details. And I’m the one to make lists upon lists.
“I did a diploma in event management about five or six years ago, in the Fitzwilliam Institute, and that’s really stood to me,” Rosanna adds. “I thought, at the end, ‘Oh, I’ll never use this’, but, actually, Wes said recently, ‘God, that diploma came in really useful.’ Because I am being really focused on all the elements, and watching it all come together. It’s really rewarding.”
Asked what her favourite thing is about Wes, she first identifies his “great spirit. He’s got a really happy, positive outlook.
“He’s really outgoing, really fun, really friendly. That’s loads of things,” she laughs. “He’s great friends with my friends, as well. I can bring him on a night out with just the girls and he gets on great with everyone. Gives them all relationship advice.”
Rosanna would like to have children. “Motherhood does interest me, and I think it has to be the near future, because I’m 30 now, and I’m aware that time is getting less,” she says. “Time is more valuable, in terms of being a mother. But it’s something that I want, and Wes definitely wants.”
He’d love four, she laughs, but she wants to stop at two, citing career ambitions and a lack of interest in spending the best part of a decade pregnant. “We’ve raised our two sons – our two dogs – in the last few years. And that actually is good parenting practice,” she says. “Picking up after them, cleaning their messes. Obviously, it’s not quite the same, but, in terms of shared responsibility for another creature, we’ve had good practice.”
Rosanna also recently graduated from her three-year course in nutrition at the College of Naturopathic Medicine. The way she talks avidly about healthy eating is another clue to her present, seemingly happier than ever, state of mind. “I was a bit of a nerd, and still am,” she recalls of sitting in on a boyfriend’s biology lectures in UCD. The eventual goal is to set up her own practice. At the moment, she’s seeing clients at home. She’s clearly getting great personal pleasure from this new career avenue.
There’s a certain disconnect between the Rosanna you see in shoots, both for LIFE and, recently, for Playboy, and the Rosanna you get in life; diligent student, perfect daughter, family girl, extreme health fanatic, hard worker. Is there a hidden wild child she doesn’t get to express in any other part of life? Does work allow her to express parts of her personality that her life doesn’t allow for? Or does she take on roles?
“I guess it is like getting into character, and I really enjoy that, actually,” she says. “You feel different depending on what clothes you put on. It’s quite liberating, I suppose, stepping out of who you are and stepping into a character.”
Her early shoots with Wes were as much an expression of liberation, a throwing off of the Miss World goody-two-shoes shackle, than anything else. Nowadays, she’s more motivated by business or branding concerns. The famous Playboy shoot that ran first in the German issue and later in the American, seemed as much an exercise in brand extension than a cry of freedom. Her parents, she says, were completely supportive.
“I’m very lucky that my parents support and trust my decisions,” she explains. “I went and talked to them about the Playboy shoot and had their full support. It would have been harder to do it, or want to do it, if I didn’t have their support. But they were really encouraging.
“And we have a great relationship, in that anything that I decide on they usually support.” She would consider doing Playboy again in the future, “if everything was in shape and not heading south.”
Rosanna once spoke about her people-pleasing trait when it came to loved ones and friends. “The people-pleasing thing is gone,” she says now. “I just think it’s so important to do what makes you happy. If your loved ones see that you’re happy, and making the decision for the right reasons, then they will, surely, support you.”
