Madonna is opening up about telling the story of her life.
The 67-year-old “I Feel So Free” Queen of Pop got candid in a new cover story for Interview Magazine, marking her 11th appearance on the cover, the most in the magazine’s history.
During the conversation with editor-in-chief Mel Ottenberg, the “Bring Your Love” icon spoke about her early days in New York City, getting discovered, her new album Confessions II, and the stalled experience of making a biopic, a status update on the Netflix series, among many other topics.
See some of the highlights from Madonna‘s Interview story…
On her stalled biopic:
“I was supposed to make a movie about my life. I worked on my script for two years and spent two years at Universal Studios with the line producers doing budgeting and casting. We had a falling out, me and Universal, regarding budget because I needed—I’ve had an extraordinary life. I’ve had a huge life, so I needed a big budget. You know what I mean? It’s not going be a…they couldn’t get their heads around it. I found a way to make it for less money in Serbia, but I don’t think they were into the idea of—I don’t know. Maybe they just didn’t believe in me. One of their first reactions was, ‘We don’t believe you’d stay in Serbia more than four days.’ And I said, ‘Did you read the script?’ My whole life has been survival. I’m not going there for a holiday. But anyway, I was in limbo when that fell apart, and then Netflix reached out to make a series. That was a whole other long process, because I couldn’t use the script I had with Universal unless I bought it from them for an extortionist’s price, even though I wrote it. Don’t ask. That’s just the way it goes. I started trying to understand how making a series would work. It’s a very, very different process. You have to meet a lot of writers and find the right showrunner, and I couldn’t find one. This went on for another eight or nine months. I was like, ‘Good thing I have another job because I need to work, I need to create. I need to do what I was put on this earth to do.’”
On reuniting with Confessions on a Dance Floor producer Stuart Price and working on her new album, and what’s happening with the Netflix series about her life:
“It’s hard for me to write a song about nothing. I have to tell a story. So I wrote about a lot of family trauma, and then we started making dance music. I came back and forth a couple of times and then I said, ‘Okay, this is right. This feels good. So unless Netflix is going to call me tomorrow with a writer I like, I’m going to start going down this road.’ Of course, in the middle of the process, more than like 75 percent of the way through, we found the writer and I was like, ‘I can’t turn back now. I have to move this up a bit.’ So that’s what I did.”
On meeting her late best friend, Martin Burgoyne:
“I probably looked completely tragic waiting in line at Danceteria. That’s when Martin came up to me. He was really cute: blonde curly hair, earrings up his ears, plaid golf shorts, Doc Martens, black frames, and a white t-shirt with a sweater vest over it. He’s like, ‘You look lost.’ And I was. He said, ‘Come with me. I’ll get you in.’ And he just crashed to the front of the line. Everybody knew him. He said hi to everybody. The doorman opened the velvet rope. He brought me in and my whole life changed. And obviously I went there a lot because I was figuring out a way to butter up Mark Kamins.”
On how she got her demo tape to DJ Mark Kamins, which eventually led to her getting signed:
“I made friends with Debi Mazar, who was 16 when she was working there and lying about her age…Debi and Martin [Burgoyne] really shepherded me around, and eventually I ended up in a bathroom with Mark Kamins, and I saw him snorting coke. He’s dead now. I can say that…I started putting two and two together and I was like, ‘Okay, he likes this, he likes that.’ So one day, me and Debi got this idea that we were going to—this is going to sound terribly manipulative… I brought him some coke in the bathroom, took him in the stalls, me and Debi…so anyway, we made out, we did a little blow, and then he agreed to listen to my demo.”
On “The Test,” written with her daughter Lourdes:
“She approached me about writing a song together as a way to heal our relationship. It was a really important moment, and it solidified the idea that now is the time to make this record.”
On why now was the time for Confessions II:
“All these symbolic things happened. My step-mother died, my brother was ill, my brother died, my daughter approached me… you know what I mean? And then I thought, well, it’s like the script of my film. It begins with death and it ends with death, but there’s all this life in between. Paradoxical subjects, obviously, but death is a part of life. It just felt like I had a lot to get off my chest.”
On Instagram:
“If I go on Instagram for more than 10 minutes, I get depressed, and I don’t want to go there. Why am I giving this nonexistent entity power over my soul, my brain, my vision of myself, my vision of the world? Time is precious, and that’s something I’ve known all my life. Time’s precious. What can I get done? What can I do?”
On nudity:
“Now everyone’s naked. Now I don’t want to be naked because everyone’s naked. That’s my nature. I want to do what people are not doing, which is thinking and wearing clothes.”
For much more from Madonna, head to interviewmagazine.com.
In addition, Madonna just announced a collaboration with ABSOLUT, as well as releasing a new Stuart Price remix of “Bring Your Love” and from Honey Dijon. She was also just named the Global Brand Ambassador for KIKO Milano.
Madonna interviewed by Mel Ottenberg for Interview Magazine
Credits:
Editor-in-Chief: Mel Ottenberg
Editorial Director: Richard Turley
Entertainment Director: Lauren Tabach-Bank
Editor at Large: Christopher Bollen
Managing Editor & Production Director: Alexandra Weiss
Art Director: Jack Vhay
Associate Editor: Emily Sandstrom
Maverick Management: Sara Zambreno, Geordon Nicol, and Brit Reece at Align PR
Photographed by Nadia Lee Cohen
Styled by Mel Ottenberg
Entertainment Director: Lauren Tabach-Bank
Hair: Eugene Souleiman at Streeters
Makeup: Marcelo Gutierrez at Huxley using KIKO MILANO
Nails: Naomi Yasuda at Forward Artists
Models: Hervé and Ben Doughty
Posted To:Confessions II Debi Mazar Interview Magazine Madonna Martin Burgoyne Mel Ottenberg Music Netflix
Leave a Reply