‘This is some crazy person’: Ever noticed difference between the Beyonce on-stage and offstage? Yep, because the one performing is Sasha Fierce

Beyonce has transitioned through multiple eras across her career, from the dance music pioneer of Renaissance to the country pop star of Cowboy Carter, but perhaps the only constant throughline has been the singer’s alter ego, Sasha Fierce. 

It was this alter ego that inspired Beyonce’s 2008 album, I Am… Sasha Fierce, and it has also been the subject of much speculation over the years. In an interview with Elle, Beyonce’s mother, Tina Knowles, pulled back the curtain on the elusive Sasha Fierce, and shared with the singer’s millions of fans the story of its origins and the darker side of Beyonce it manifests. 

The story goes that in 2008 — the same year as the release of Beyonce’s third studio album — Sasha Fierce was born as a way for the singer to invoke the energy of Etta James, the singer-songwriter she was portraying in the music biopic, Cadillac Records. At the time, Knowles insisted that her daughter take on the role of the iconic singer — known for diva attitude and edgier persona — because she always knew Beyonce “wanted to do something dark,” Knowles told Elle. 

With that, Sasha Fierce became a vessel for Beyonce to channel a rougher, less polished version of herself, useful for her portrayal of James but also one that infused itself in her music career. According to Knowles, it was Sasha who those close to Beyonce would mention whenever she was singing on stage or fretting over a performance. “We’d tease Beyoncé about having a split personality,” Knowles said. “[We] would work with her doing a quick change when she’d come off the stage between sets. Beyoncé would start screaming, ‘What’s wrong with you? Where’s my shoe?’ ‘Uh oh,’ we’d say, ‘Sasha is here.’”

Knowles went on to reveal that the name Sasha was given to Beyonce by her cousins, but the pop star has cited other origins for the alter ego in various interviews. Some credit the work of drag queens in influencing the inception of the persona, while others say it was conceived with the help of Beyonce’s former vocal coach, David Brewer. In any case, the presence of Sasha Fierce within Beyonce was notable enough for Knowles, who said she thought of her daughter’s changed persona as “some crazy person.”

“This is some crazy person who’s doing this quick change,” Knowles said of Beyonce’s Sasha-infused stage presence. “She’s another person up there. We don’t take it personally. Sasha is her bragging side… I don’t know whether to say it, but her hip-hop side.” Beyonce herself has commented on the impact of the alter ego in older interviews, telling Oprah in 2007 that Sasha “doesn’t do interviews” and “only performs.” Like her mother, Beyonce also linked the creation of the persona to her acting work, saying that inhabiting the role is “kind of like doing a movie.”

“When you put on the wig and put on the clothes, you walk different,” she said, before describing Sasha Fierce as a “thing that takes over.” Beyonce then explained how Sasha manifests in the moments before a music performance, like when she “hear[s] the chords [and] when I put on my stilettos… then Sasha Fierce appears, and my posture and the way I speak and everything is different.”

While Beyonce has since retired the persona — saying in 2010 that she had killed off Sasha Fierce — there are still remnants of that more empowered self in her recent work, since she was “able to merge the two” sides of her persona. Sasha was certainly present in the undeniable stage presence of Beyonce’s Renaissance tour, her history-making Grammys status, and in any number of head-turning red carpet looks. Sasha will always be with us, and we all have a little bit of her fierceness within us, too.