Madonna - On Top, But Alone

Madonna: On Top, But Alone

Madonna: “I had done the movie Evita. I had my “Ray of Light” record coming out. And from an outward perspective, you know all, everything was beautiful. Just did a fantastic movie. Just did a fantastic record, had a beautiful, healthy girl. But I was alone. I was alone.”

That was six years ago, a painful time Madonna is now willing to talk about with surprising candor.

Madonna: “I was 38 when my daughter was born. I was, you know, looking for love in all the wrong places. Or maybe I didn’t even know what love was. And I want to be in a loving relationship. And so far, I’ve either destroyed the good ones or been a magnet for a-holes.”

She didn’t name names, but you try and figure it out. At that point, she had married and divorced Sean Penn, co-starred on screen and off with Warren Beatty, went one on one with Dennis Rodman, had a daughter and a breakup with Carlos Leon — and those are the men we know about.

Lauer: “You said you were looking for love in all the wrong places.”

Madonna: “Well, I wasn’t interested in what I could do for other people. I looked at people and said, what are they going to do for me? Will they look good standing next to me? Will they compliment me all the time? Will they give me what I want?”

Lauer: “You dated guys just to see if they’d look good standing next to you?”

Madonna: “Oh God. Maybe once or twice. I didn’t actually have that conversation. But how many times have you fallen for somebody just based on how they look? I mean we’ve all done it, you know. And then, two weeks out, they’re like ax murderers living in your house.”

But she wasn’t making those choices, good or bad, for just herself anymore.

Madonna: ‘I just suddenly thought, okay, I have a child that I’m going to bring up in the world. And what am I going to teach her? I just wanted answers to my questions, you know what I mean? Because I thought, okay all these great things have happened to me. But I’m still not happy.”

But in 1998, she finally found the guy that would bring her happiness: Guy Ritchie, a British film director, 10 years her junior. They had a cross-Atlantic romance and married in December 2000, just a few months after the birth of their son, Rocco. The Ritchies, along with daughter Lourdes, shuttle between homes in London and Los Angeles. Madonna says she loves being a wife and mother, and although she admits marriage can be challenging, she says her relationship has never been better.

Lauer: “How’s married life?”

Madonna: “It’s good.”

Lauer: “Happily married, I mean... you can make that definitive statement, ‘I’m a happily married woman.’”

Madonna: “Yes, I am.”

Mr. and Mrs. Ritchie navigated some rough waters early on. Remember “Swept Away?” If you didn’t see it — and according to the box office, you weren’t alone — you certainly heard about it. The film was a joint production, she starred, he directed. It wasn’t just a flop, it was a disaster.

Lauer: “‘Swept Away’ was the last time we spoke. It was just about to come out and it got brutalized. When did you realize that this was going to go very far south?”

Madonna: “Well, not until it came out. Because up until it came out, I showed it to my friends. Everybody liked it, the studio liked it.”

Lauer: “You show a movie to your friend, are they going to be honest with you, even though a movie like that, that you and your husband invested so much time and energy in? Your have a friend who would say I hated it?”

Madonna: “They wouldn’t say I hated it. but they might say, you know, I’ve done things better. I mean people are honest with me definitely.”

The critics certainly didn’t mince words. One called it “a shipwreck lost at sea.” Another, “an island catastrophe,” and still another wrote, “to say that Madonna’s ‘Swept Away’ is not doing well is like saying that Enron’s Ken Lay had a bad fourth quarter. Never has the word stink appeared in so many typefaces across so many mediums.” Ouch.

Madonna: “I don’t want to hear it. Don’t tell me any negatives that people said.”

Lauer: “Have you read them?”

Madonna: “No, I’ve only heard that they’re really horrible.”

Lauer: “You have no interest in them?”

Madonna: “I have not read one review. And I don’t want to read them.”

Lauer: “Why would so many people have their knives out?”

Madonna: “I just don’t think people are comfortable with me doing well in other areas besides music. I think that there’s a lot of evil eye on my relationship with my husband. We’re in love, we have beautiful children together and now we’re making a movie together. I mean how dare we, in a way. But at the end of the day, it’s one thing to say you don’t like the movie. Okay fine, don’t like the movie. But they weren’t really criticizing the movie. It was like personal vendettas.”

Lauer: “Do you think you can act?”

Madonna: “Yeah, I do.”

Lauer: “You think you’re good at it?”

Madonna: “Yeah, I do.”

Lauer: “Are you getting offers?”

Madonna: Yeah, believe it or not, I am still getting offers.”

In fact just last week, she made her episodic television debut on the NBC sitcom, “Will and Grace.”

Lauer: “You’ve told me for as long as I’ve known you, you don’t watch TV.”

Madonna: “I don’t, yeah.”

Lauer: “So why would someone who doesn’t watch TV do a TV show?”

Madonna: “Why do it? Because, honestly, my manager talked me into it. She just kept saying, oh, it’s so funny, you have to do it. So she sent over a couple of tapes of other people being on it, and I saw them and I thought they were hysterical.”

Lauer: “So tell me about the experience. What’s it like to be on a sitcom set?”

Madonna: “It’s great, it’s like theatre, because you have a live audience and you only have a week to prepare and every day they change everything.”

Lauer: “It’s a bit more spontaneous than making a movie.”

Madonna: “It is. I prefer it.”

Lauer: “So it sounds like you would be open to doing it again?”

Madonna: “I said yeah, if it can help other people.”

Lauer: “Well sitcoms aren’t normally known for helping other people.”

Madonna: “You never know. Never say never.”

Life As An Icon

From movies to marriage, Madonna’s every move still makes headlines. And she often wants it that way. But as clever as she is at getting our attention, she’s even more adept at shielding her privacy. Few people really know her. So we wanted to know, what exactly is Madonna’s American life?

Madonna: “I am the epitome of the American dream. I came from nothing. You know I did something incredible with my life. And I realized a lot of dreams.”

She certainly has. ‘American Life’ is her sixteenth album. She’s had 12 number one hits and is worth a reported $300 million. She has success and all the spoils that go with it, something she pokes fun at in the song “American Life.”

She may not be your average mom, but Madonna says she tries to live as normal a life as one of the world’s most famous women can.

Madonna: “I’ve always considered myself to be fairly down-to-earth and not taking the whole, you know, fame thing too seriously. You can find me washing my own dishes in my sweatpants in my house, you know what I mean?”

Lauer: “Do you have a normal day? If you and I wanted to go for Starbucks right now —”

Madonna: “Can we go to the Coffee Bean instead, because, I mean, I’m drinking tea now, not coffee.”

Lauer: “Could we get in a car in Los Angeles?”

Madonna: “We could even walk. From my house we could ride a bike, because I live right nearby.”

Lauer: “So you don’t get hounded?”

Madonna: “Yeah, I do. There would be probably at least 10 SUVs full of paparazzi following you, but we just pretend they’re not there.”

Lauer: “How long would it take? How long on the street until you attract a crowd of paparazzi?”

Madonna: “Oh, they’re usually waiting at the end of the block.”

Lauer: “How does that strike you at 44 years old?”

Madonna: “It’s pretty irritating. But you know, what are you going to do? I complain about it, still nothing changes. I try to wear the same outfit all the time to really lie.”

Lauer: “So they can’t sell them.”

Madonna: “Yeah. I try to be really boring and have a really bland expression on my face, but it doesn’t seem... I think they’re waiting for me to fall off my bike or something.”

Lauer: “Do you feel a bit of a prisoner to the fame you’ve achieved?”

Madonna: “I don’t feel like a prisoner. But do I get annoyed that I can’t go for a bike ride or a walk without people following me? Yeah, I do.”

Lauer: “How do you feel about your children being photographed?”

Madonna: “I really don’t like that. That’s one thing that gets my goat.”

But she hasn’t taken extreme steps to hide her kids, unlike that other pop icon, Michael Jackson. Who can forget that bizarre scene of Jackson covering his children’s faces with masks in the now infamous Martin Bashir documentary? Madonna and Jackson are what you’d call show biz pals, sharing an only-in-Hollywood-date to the Academy Awards back in 1991.

Lauer: “Still friends?”

Madonna: “Oh, I haven’t talked to him in ages.”

Lauer: “Did you see the documentary?”

Madonna: “I didn’t. I heard about it. Everybody was talking about it at one point and describing scenes to me. It just sounds horrifying. I wouldn’t want to watch it.”

Lauer: “Horrifying in what way?”

Madonna: “Oh, just having so exploited, I don’t know. I don’t like it. I don’t like people humiliating other people like that. Doesn’t seem right and fair.”

Lauer: “You said this, ‘publicly humiliating someone for your own gain,’ which is I think what you feel Martin Bashir may have done, ‘will only come back to haunt you. I can assure all of these people will be sorry when God’s going to have his revenge.’ Do you think God is vengeful?”

Madonna: “First of all I think that all of us have God in us and that we have God-like qualities. The ability to be like God. I don’t think ultimately God punishes. I think we bring about our own destruction or our own creation.”

Lauer: “So when God is going to have his revenge?”

Madonna: “Then what I’m saying is ultimately the person who was negative will bring negativity back towards himself.”

Lauer: “What I would call karma... whatever comes around.”

Madonna: “You got it. Yeah.”

Next: Madonna's Spritiual Sid