Interview Magazine basically does seasonal issues now, and Rihanna is the cover girl for Interview’s Summer issue. You can see the cover package here – the photos by Pierre-Ange Carlotti are striking, but the real gem is the interview by Sarah Paulson. Paulson and Rihanna met and became good friends while working Ocean’s Eight. You could just tell from their promotional work together that they really got along. And Sarah brings out the funny side of Rihanna in this interview too, the way a good friend can. Some highlights:

Scheduling “personal time” in her calendar: “I never used to be this way. It’s only the last couple years that I started to realize that you need to make time for yourself, because your mental health depends on it. If you’re not happy, you’re not going to be happy even doing things that you love doing. It’d feel like a chore. I never want work to feel like a chore. My career is my purpose, and it should never feel like anything other than a happy place. I’ve made little things a big deal, like going for a walk or going to the grocery store. I got into a new relationship, and it matters to me. It was like, “I need to make time for this.” Just like I nurture my businesses, I need to nurture this as well. I’ll shut things down for two days, three days at a time. On my calendar we now have the infamous “P,” which means personal days. This is a new thing.

Whether she sleeps: “I don’t have a sleep pattern. I have sleep pockets. I fit it in when I can. That’s why I take those personal days so seriously. Because it’s like, “You had all of me. I gave you the answers.”

The biggest misconception about Rihanna: “People don’t know that I’m shy. [Paulson tells her she knew right away that she’s shy.] And you are good at reading someone’s character, because that’s what you do for a living. Your gift is that you would know the exhibited behavior of a shy person. Because I kind of pretend it’s not happening, people read me as being confident. But I’m so shy I don’t even want you to know I’m shy.

Whether she’s in love: “Of course I am.”

Whether she’ll get married: “Only god knows that, girl. We plan and god laughs, right?”

Whether she wants to be a mother: “More than anything in life.”

The first thing she does in the morning: “Pray. Unless I have to pee or something. I always want to start my day with a little devotion. I buy these devotion books and they’re dated, so you just pull up the date and that devotion is for that day. I’ve always been [a person of faith]. My first time praying and fasting was when I was 7 years old. I did that on my own, because I wanted to go to New York, and I knew that this was a sacrifice I had to make in order for god to make sure I could get there.

[From Interview]

So, she’s in love, she doesn’t have immediate plans to get married, and she wants kids. She’s also shy and a workaholic who only recently started making personal time a priority. I remember when Rihanna’s life seemed like a nonstop party – remember those days? When she would go down for Carnival and spend a month in a booze-and-marijuana haze on the beach? But that was years ago. Now she’s works, works, works. And loves and schedules private time. And describes herself as “shy.”

Photos courtesy of Interview and Backgrid.