Melanie Brown poses with Angel and new husband on cover of Hello!

Spice Girl Melanie Brown, 32, husband Stephen Belafonte, and daughter Angel Iris, 4 months, are pictured on the cover of Hello! magazine this week, with an interview inside. In it, Melanie reveals that what initially attracted her to Stephen in a romantic way (they’d been friends for seven years) was his tenderness around daughter Gisele, 3.

When you see a man around his daughter and they’re so hands on…it’s just gorgeous.

Also gorgeous is Angel, her daughter with Eddie Murphy, against whom she holds no grudges.

He gave me the best gift ever, which is a beautiful, healthy baby. How can I be mad at that?

Source: Hello!

Comments

I guess privacy is not important to her since they are always airing their dirty laundry in public and having press conferences and going on TV tabloid shows with her attorney and being on various magazine covers and alerting the paparazzi when they go somewhere. I just don’t want to hear her later on saying she wants to be left alone and given some privacy since she is the one seeking out all this publicity and attention.

- Beverley on August 21st, 2007

Nice picture, but why only include one daughter? Between them, they have 3 right? So why not all three?

- Mandii on August 21st, 2007

I wasn’t aware that she got married!!! Obviously missed something somewheres. Congrats to her. Her phote looks so different I hardly realized it was her. Hopefully she can put all this baby drama behind her and be happy!

- Jory on August 21st, 2007

Mandii, I totally agree!! Where are the other two girls? You would think they’d put the whole family on the cover seeing as how it looks like a family pic. Anyway Angel is a beautiful baby girl!!

- heather on August 21st, 2007

bla bla bla… best gift but she still wants eddie’s money

- may on August 21st, 2007

Angel is gorgeous and she looks like her mother thank goodness. I think it’s time to let this die now, Eddie is and always will be a louse for the way he behaved and talking it to death won’t change it for her. She looks happy with her husband and Angel looks like a happy and healthy girl, let the courts do their job and she can do hers, which is to be a happy mother and wife. Privacy should paramount for this child and their new family. I admire her tenacity and her refusal to play dead to Eddie or his celebrity, but she made her point months ago when that DNA test came back IMO.

- Grayson's Girl on August 21st, 2007

She cleans up nice! They make a great looking family. Maybe the other little girls are pictured inside?

- Xan on August 21st, 2007

I will not understand her tactics with the way she handled the whole situation with Eddie. Then again the Spice girls are reuniting so whatever. I will say she looks stunning in this photo.

- Natalie S. on August 21st, 2007

I agree, the photo should have the other two girls included or none of the children it’s not as though Angel is theirs together. If they are trying to portray a happy family it doesn’t appear very functional. As i haven’t read the whole article, i know i’m judging a book by it’s cover but…for awhile now it’s appeared to me as though Mel is trying too hard to proove that she has moved on, don’t get me wrong i’m all for moving on but she’s prooven Eddie is the father, she doesn’t want him to have any custodial rights…(she has applied for full custody as far as I am aware)and she’s still on this publicity drive. I sure it’s not for the money the Spice Girls reunion should cover her living expences! I just don’t see the point…hashing the same story over and over.

- lulusass on August 21st, 2007

I have never heard if her alerting the paparazzi where she will be.I guess it seems that way cause she doesn’t stop living her life when she sees them around her.It’s best to let them take their pictures cause if celebs try to block them or get angry, it becomes bigger news and they are seen as being violent or disrespectful to the fact that they are even famous to the public.

- Renee on August 21st, 2007

Wow she loves attention and is milking this lol. I don’t remember elizabeth hurley or heidi klum on every magazine talking the same thing, about their baby’s daddy. Angel looks a lot like eddie though.

- gabriella on August 21st, 2007

She doesn’t waste much time, does she?

- daphneesmith on August 21st, 2007

Her hubby looks like J Lo’s ex Cris Judd (I think thats what hes called! I’m glad shes happy and moving on with her life.

- Becky on August 21st, 2007

“He gave me the best gift ever, which is a beautiful, healthy baby. How can I be mad at that?”

She sure fooled me. Between the incessant public Eddie-bashing, magazine spreads, public press conferences, TV interviews, and staged paparazzi shoots, I just assumed Melanie was mad at Eddie and holding a grudge against him. What a fool I have been.

- Lauren on August 21st, 2007

This gal is staying “out front” it seems… hopefully she has a management team that knows what they are doing. Wow, that sweet baby is ADORABLE!!!

- Campbell on August 21st, 2007

Cute baby.

- Destiny on August 21st, 2007

Maybe they left the two older girls out since the news about Angel and her new marriage is the current “cooler talk”. I don’t know.

But whatever reason, that is a cute photo, and they do make a nice-looking couple/family. Angel is just as sweet as she wants to be.

- FC on August 21st, 2007

Publicity publicity publicity! That’s all it is. She needs it because none of the spice girls besides Victoria get much attention and since the group is reuniting I think they’re all trying to find ways to put themselves out there.

I agree not having the other kids is tasteless and the situation with Eddie needs to be just done. Nobody cares anyomore, okay well atleast I don’t. She claims to have moved on yet she still seems to be rehashing the same old stuff.

- J.M. on August 21st, 2007

She is a black version of THALIA (Tommy Mottola’s wife) She is just beautiful! and her daughter is such a cutie!

- Lina on August 21st, 2007

I am in the exact same situation as Melanie – my little boy is almost 9months old and his father hasn’t seen him since March because his new girlfriend “wouldn’t like it” so he wanted to have nothing more to do with us. It is obvious Melanie has moved on, as have I, but it doesn’t mean you just “get over it”. I don’t think you ever will. And I totally understand what she means when she says she doesn’t hate him because he gave her a beautiful little girl – I feel the same way. I don’t hate my little boy’s father, I hate the way he is acting but thats different to actually hating the guy.
So I think Melanie is handling this great – if talking about it over and over helps her get thru it then good on her! I don’t think she is “trashing” eddie murphy – he’s doing that all on his own. Melanie is just telling it like it is!
Everyone handles things differently, but if you haven’t been in this situation then I don’t think you can judge her.

- Robyn on August 21st, 2007

Am I the only one who noticed this pic is totally photoshopped? All the other pics I’ve seen of her show a very different more “normal” looking Mel B. This pic looks nothing like her.

- Juliet on August 21st, 2007

Beautiful family.

- terri on August 21st, 2007

I agree Juliet! I would not have even know it was her had I just glanced at it in the store!

- Jory on August 21st, 2007

Such a beautiful picture! Its nice she has such a positive attitude in saying that she couldnt be mad at eddie because he gave her a beautiful healthy baby! Such a beautiful thing to say in what was an ugly situation!

- Anni on August 21st, 2007

Hasn’t it just recently come out that he beat up his ex and has a warrant out for brutally bashing a bird to death? I wonder where that fits in to the whole “seeing him being tender with his daughter” image?

Sarah’s note: Apparently it’s addressed in the issue, so I’m interested to read it. I did see this from both Melanie and from his ex, Nicole:

She tells Hello!, “For him to seen as a wife beater is devastating for me because he’s not — he never has been. He hasn’t been the best of people. I know everything that he’s done. He went through group therapy and counseling, but he’s fully aware of what he’s done.”

Stephen’s ex Nicole Contreras apparently agrees as well. She issued the following statement this afternoon to TMZ: “Stephen Belafonte and I had a long relationship that ended mutually. Despite reports, there was never any physical violence involved in the relationship. We share a beautiful three year old daughter together and
are amicable.”

- Lilybett on August 21st, 2007

Wow, when did they get married?

Sarah’s note: The beginning of June but they kept it a secret.

- Rebecca on August 21st, 2007

Angel is such a beautiful baby!

I think we all can see what Mel’s angle is. . .as for Stephen Belafonte, ummmm what to say.
He is no relation to Harry Belafonte but he changed his name to give that appearance. As for the domestic violence allegations, he was court ordered to complete counseling (per the documents on TMZ). Usually the judge doesn’t sentence someone without them being found guilty.

If it puts her on the front of a magazine cover there is no telling what Mel will do.

Good luck little Angel!

- sweetdiva on August 22nd, 2007

I don’t understand why she has to keep talking about her private life. It seems that it’s all about her personal issues. Honestly i don’t like how she’s using all this to appear in magazines and tv in general.

I agree with Beverley. She better not complain later about not being left alone by the media.

- Toontown on August 22nd, 2007

ITA with Robyn! Melanie’s not mad about Eddie fathering her child, she’s mad about how he’s acting.
From what I can tell, what she is really upset about is the fact that he:

1. Has not asked how Angel is doing.

and

2. Refuses to see Angel.

It is pretty obvious that she isn’t trying to force him to play an active part in Angel’s life (as other posters have pointed out, she has filed for full legal and physical custody of Angel). I think that what she wants is for Eddie to see his daughter at least ONCE. Personally, I don’t blame her for that. Eddie SHOULD at least make the effort to meet his baby girl.

As for Mel’s new hubby, keep in mind that it wasn’t just Mel who denied that he was violent towards his ex-wife; his ex-wife also denied it. Just because TMZ posted the documents doesn’t mean that they are real (I am not sure how accurate TMZ is, but I do seem to remember their fondness for posting “offical documents”. For example, they posted the “birth certificates” for Suri Cruise and Jayden James Federline).

All of that said, I must respectfully disagree with J.M. that, excluding Victoria Beckham (who, as J.M. pointed out, has been getting a lot of media attention lately) “all of the Spice Girls are trying to put themselves ‘out there’”. I have not seen Emma Bunton do any sort of “publicity stunt” (granted, she just had a baby, so she is probably recovering and taking it easy right now, but still!), and the only time I’ve seen or heard anything about Gerri Halliwell lately is the paparazzi pics of her and Bluebell that have been posted her on CBB recently. To be fair, I don’t know for sure about Mel C., as she doesn’t have any kids and therefore tidbits about her obviously don’t get posted on CBB (other than the article in which she stated that she does want a “Spice Baby” someday, but wants to focus on her career for now), and CBB is the only celebrity-related blog I go to.

Anyway, in Mel’s defense, I don’t neccesarily think that she is doing anything wrong. Like another poster has said, just because Eddie has been proven to be Angel’s father and has acknowledged that fact doesn’t mean that Mel’s going to magically “get over” the way he acted when she was pregnant, and the fact that he denied Angel was his daughter until he was forced to take the paternity test. If talking to the media about the situation over and over again helps her, then I say good for her! Just because we may not like hearing the same things from her over and over again doesn’t mean that she needs to stop saying them!
Oh, and Mel isn’t the only celeb mom who has been known to repeat things. When Angelina Jolie was doing press for A Mighty Heart, for example, she repeated a lot of the same stuff about her kids in her interviews.

- Annoynomus on August 23rd, 2007