“There’s room for everyone to shine,” Madonna remarked to me when we found ourselves backstage at the Jean Paul Gaultier Spring/Summer 1995 fashion event, held at the Musée des Arts Forains in Paris.
We were both on the runway together. Madonna donned a flowing chiffon dress, playfully wheeling a baby carriage with a tiny white dog inside. As for me, I was clad in a revealing thong swimsuit—not the most secure ensemble, because a single good cough might have sent it flying.
Though instructed to avoid any interaction with the pop icon, my 23-year-old self disregarded the cautious warnings (some things never change) and boldly strolled into her private area to strike up a conversation.
Relaxed and composed, she engaged in conversation with the esteemed hairstylist Orlando Pita, sharing that her housekeeper, a Santeria practitioner, would cover her in honey as part of a sun-lit purification ritual. Quite the sticky situation!
As Madonna looked up and greeted me with a warm smile, it was clear she wasn’t bothered by my intrusion. Taking this as my cue, I seized the moment to seek her advice. Not long before, Sandra Bernhard, a former friend of hers, had inexplicably critiqued me in Time Magazine.
‘There is no need to tear each other down, especially other women,’ she purred. It turned out to be some of the best advice I’ve ever received. I walked away glowing.
Madonna was wearing a chiffon gown and pushed a baby carriage with a little white dog inside
‘The world is big enough for everyone’s talent,’ Madonna told me backstage at Jean Paul Gaultier’s (left) Spring/Summer 1995 fashion show in Paris
I had been warned not to ‘under any circumstances’ talk to the Queen of Pop, but 23-year-old me ignored the handlers
The next night there was a party for Gaultier and I was busy flirting with a hot American model named Andre when Madonna walked into the restaurant with her then-boyfriend Carlos Leon.
Andre suddenly turned to stone. ‘Here, sit on my lap,’ he said, pulling me on top of him.
Since I had ZERO game, I was, of course, down for whatever this perfect hunk of man meat was serving. But as we kissed, he was glaring at Madonna and, for the life of me, I could not figure out what was happening.
It turned out they had dated and whatever that was worked. Madonna walked over and pleaded – with her eyes – for peace with dumb Andre. Then Madge waved goodbye to me and left.
I love her… just about as much as I hate her.
For now, as Madonna explodes back into the culture with her latest reinvention – promoting her new album Confessions on a Dance Floor: Part II – I know that her moods are not unlike the boom-and-bust cycles of her career.
She’s a true diva.
Madonna walked into the restaurant with her then-boyfriend Carlos Leon (Pictured: Madonna and Carlos Leon in Paris in 1995)
I know that her moods are not unlike the boom-and-bust cycles of her career (Pictured: Madonna in Paris on June 24)
As kind as Madonna was to me in Paris, I can’t say she was exactly nice to me when I saw her again at the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles.
In fact, she was a raging bitch.
I had become good friends with her manager Guy O’Seary (who would later run her now-defunct Maverick Records) and he assured me, ‘M loves you!’, so we walked over to her table after her kickass performance of Shanti/Ashtangi.
Madonna had what looked like lines of colored frosting on her face. She was going through a ‘eastern spirituality phase’ she’d picked up while pregnant with her daughter Lourdes.
‘Look who I found?’ Guy said.
Madonna looked up in her Bollywood cosplay and snarled, ‘What do you want?’
(I forget: Who is the Hindu god of mood disorders?)
I rolled my eyes, shook my head and walked away.
Not long after that we crossed paths again at a party with Guy. I told Madonna that I had seen Evita four times, and she asked, ‘Oh did you like it?’ I cocked my head and deadpanned, ‘No I hated it. I wanted to go back three extra times just to make sure.’
We walked over to her table after her kickass performance of Shanti/Ashtangi (Pictured: Madonna performing at the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards)
Madonna on the ‘Late Show with David Letterman in 2000
She snorted with laughter, immediately tried to compose herself and said, ‘That’s actually funny.’
Dr Jekyll?
It’s well-known that no one in Madonna’s orbit dares call her by her real name. It’s always ‘M’ or ‘Madge’ or ‘Mo’, or some other made-up moniker that indulges the fantasy that she’s normal. But she’s not. She couldn’t be. For as many times as Madonna has been culturally discarded and left for dead, she’s found her away back. It’s almost superhuman.
I saw her perform in concert for the first time on her Like a Virgin tour in 1985. She was already an icon and I was up to my elbows in gummy rubber bracelets desperately trying to look like her character Susan Thomas in Desperately Seeking Susan. I screamed the lyrics to Borderline loud enough for her to hear me.
And I’ll never forget waiting in line in 1992 with my fellow VJ John Norris to get our hands on her book, Sex, the day it was released. The overhyped coffee table smut had some beautiful portraits, goofy shots with Vanilla Ice and was so poorly constructed it fell apart in your hands when you turned the spiral bound pages. I still have mine intact in the original packaging.
As a VJ at MTV, I watched the industry alternate between her eulogies and proclamations of her triumphal returns. She’d vanish from the scene and then hit you upside the head with some masterful reinvention, like the Bedtime Stories album, or some wild collaboration, like that 2003 VMA makeout sesh with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, and be heralded as a genius once more, then do something absolutely humiliating.
She’d vanish from the scene and then hit you upside the head with some wild collaboration, like that 2003 VMA makeout sesh with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera (above)
I’ll never forget waiting in line in 1992 with my fellow VJ John Norris to get our hands on her book, Sex, the day it was released
In 2021, everyone cringed when she flashed her booty while laying across Jimmy Fallon’s desk on the Tonight Show.
Two years later, it wasn’t funny at all when she was hospitalized, she said, with a ‘serious bacterial infection’ and placed in ‘an induced coma for 48 hours.’
It suddenly seemed like Madonna wasn’t coming back again. Her movie star good looks were veering into horror show territory, and the shock and awe antics that once were felt titillating were getting icky. The Material Girl was becoming a granny
When 67-year-old Madonna appeared three-stories high on a stage in Times Square, grinding in lingerie and pressing her naughty bits against a plexiglass barrier during a Pride event in early June, I thought I had finally had enough. But how wrong I was.
Madge has returned and is, dare I say, cool once more.
A collab with Sabrina Carpenter at April’s Coachella music festival brought the house down and made me think how Sabrina and Chappell Roan and so many others wouldn’t have license to lean into taboos if it weren’t for the woman who rolled around in a wedding dress and crucifixes at the 1984 Video Music Awards.
In 2021, everyone cringed when she flashed her booty while laying across Jimmy Fallon’s desk on the Tonight Show
When 67-year-old Madonna appeared three-stories high on a stage in Times Square, I thought I had finally had enough
Madonna leaving the Ritz Hotel in Paris during Paris Fashion Week on June 24
Madonna could even be learning some… boundaries. She confessed in a new sit-down with Interview Magazine that she has decided to keep her clothes on: ‘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.’
Well, not so fast. On Wednesday, she went braless, freeing the nipple in a tiny blue dress for Paris Fashion Week. I guess she’s technically clothed.
So it goes, as we summit another peak on the climb up Mt. Madonna. Whether she’s making you barf by showing too much, or making you dance yourself into a frenzy, at 67 she’s still here, still crazy, and I can’t wait to love-hate everything about her latest reincarnation.
Madonna, we’ll always have Paris.