Willa Ford: From ‘I Wanna Be Bad’ to Scott Disick’s Interior Designer

It sounds like the plot of a knock-off A Star Is Born, but Willa Ford's 2001 hit single "I Wanna Be Bad" stemmed from her being, well, bad. The then unknown singer tells me she was working with a record label at the time that asked her to make more "wholesome" music. She had other ideas.

"Everything I was writing was funky and, you know, like me," Ford says. "I remember one day I was like, 'I'm going to do the opposite of what they're telling me.' If somebody gives me an authority figure, I'm like, 'Let me go the other way.'"

That's when her "aha!" moment came. "I said [to my writing partners], 'I want to write something where I just wanna be bad,'" Ford recalls. "And they were dying. They were like, 'This is hilarious. The record label's gonna kill us, but let's do it.'"

"I Wanna Be Bad," a stomping anthem with lyrics like, "I'm losing all my cool / I'm about to break the rules" was born. Ford says the record label liked the song but wanted a softer (read cheesy) pre-chorus. But then a record executive from another label, Jason Flom, heard Ford's original version and saw her potential. The rest is pop history: Flom signed Ford, and "I Wanna Be Bad" became a smash, reaching No. 4 on Billboard's dance charts and 11 on the Top 40. She was 20 years old.

"Doing the opposite of what I was constantly being told to do and being defiant is how that song came about," Ford says.

Defiance is in Ford's DNA. It's what ignited her pop-music career—and what gave her the courage to walk away when things went awry. Her journey to career fulfillment isn't so well-known, but anyone contemplating a professional reinvention should hear it.

Born Amanda Lee Williford in Ruskin, Florida, she demonstrated her music talents at an early age. She even scored a spot studying opera in a competitive program. "I was getting free opera training from about 12 to 17. I loved it," she says. Her chops were strong (listen here), but Ford found herself rejecting opera's rigid practices. "I was a 16-year-old girl, and my teacher was telling me, 'You can't talk on the phone because you're straining your vocals' and, 'You can't drink that' and, 'You can't eat this.'"

Ford just wanted to let loose, so she pivoted. "I knew in my soul that I wasn't meant to wear a black dress in front of an orchestra and sing," she says. "In that moment I decided, 'I want to dance and have fun and write fun music.'"

The industry was ready for her. Bombastic bubblegum pop dominated radio in the early aughts, and most of the women making it looked like Ford: Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Mandy Moore, Jessica Simpson. Ford crossed paths with most of them as she made her transition to pop. "Britney was always the loveliest human—just a really cool, sweet, normal girl back in the day," she says. "Jessica was always a doll. The only person I didn't know was Christina, believe it or not. For whatever reason, we never came into each other's circle."

Ford released one album, Willa Was Here, in July 2001. It achieved moderate success on the Billboard 200 album chart, but none of the singles hit quite as hard as "I Wanna Be Bad." In a 2017 interview with Billboard, Ford explained how record company acquisitions put her in "no-man's-land" for a second album. And so she left music to explore other opportunities. She tried her hand at acting, playing Anna Nicole Smith in a Lifetime biopic and starring in the 2009 Friday the 13th remake. There was also a stint on Dancing With the Stars as well as several reality TV appearances. Nothing struck her the same way music did⁠.

That is, until interior design. During her first marriage, to hockey player Mike Modano, Ford says she worked with a designer on their Texas home and fell in love with the process. From there, she started doing design work for friends, and her casual interest soon became a full-fledged passion. "As I was doing more and more design, I started recognizing I was feeling fulfilled in the same way as I was when I was in the studio every day," she says. "Acting didn't do that for me. It's such an interesting thing. [With music] it wasn't about being an artist; it was about creating the song. Now it's about creating the space. When I made the connection that I was feeling fulfilled, I took off as a designer."

"Took off" is an understatement. Ford now has a booming interior design firm, W Ford Interiors, and stars with Scott Disick in his new E! house-flipping series Flip It Like Disick. It premieres August 4. (She works right alongside him, completely transforming multimillion-dollar homes.)

In a way, she's defying convention yet again: Instead of sticking on a path that didn't satisfy her, she found a new one. But the pivot was difficult, she says, and many people didn't understand it.

"It was hard, because I knew people were going to look at me, like, 'What are you doing?'" she says. "It sounds insane. 'You're telling me you're not doing this anymore?' And it's like, 'Yeah.' If you have an ego and think you're too good to [pivot], you will never get where you need to go. It's blood, sweat, and tears—and no ego. It has been incredible. I've grown so much from taking that leap."

With Flip It Like Disick, this leap also means a return to the spotlight. Ford says she and her current husband, former NFL player Ryan Nece, had many conversations about what this would mean for their family. (The two welcomed a son in 2016.) "I'll be putting myself on display for the good, the bad, and the ugly," she says. "Not everyone is going to love you, and that can hurt sometimes. And then there's the added part of I have an incredible little boy, and my time is so valuable as it is. I had the same setbacks as a lot of moms would maybe have on something like this. I'm really worrying more about my family first, then myself. I have already gone through this before."

Yes, she has. Ford's multifaceted career has been a roller coaster of highs and lows. When music didn't pan out as she'd hoped, she was devastated, but she now says everything makes sense. "My entire life I was singing and dancing onstage," Ford says. "And so for that to be just sort of what it was, it definitely was a big disappointment. What I love about life is that you've got to go through those moments. Those moments make you strong. They make you better. What I really know, from the chair I'm sitting in today, is I can look back at that and say, 'Thank God.' That is exactly how it was supposed to go, because now it's all good."

With this clarity, Ford—now 38—has also found perspective. While she says she has no interest in making music right now (sorry, people!), she's able to appreciate what she accomplished back in the day, particularly "I Wanna Be Bad."

"It took me a while [to listen to 'I Wanna Be Bad']," she says. "I went through a phase where I was like, 'Oh my God, I'm so embarrassed.' It was weird to hear. If I was in a wedding, they'd always request it. But I've come to a place now where I'm okay to embrace it. How many people in the world have not only had a hit single but also wrote it? I worked really hard for that."

Christopher Rosa is the staff entertainment writer at Glamour. Follow him on Twitter @chrisrosa92.

Originally Appeared on Glamour