From contemplating suicide to forgiving her gay brother, Madonna opens her heart in bombshell interview
Madonna also disclosed two new songs.
Mark
With a trailblazing career that has spanned more than 40 years, Madonna finally found something she still hadn’t done before.
On Monday, like a virgin, the Queen of Pop appeared in her maiden podcast interview and dropped some major details about her life for the very first time.
How about we take this to the next level?
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Over the course of the 2 hour and 16 minute conversation, Madonna, who looked fantastic BTW, opened up to On Purpose with Jay Shetty about everything from her spiritual life, her near-death hospitalization, new music, and the emotional moment that had her contemplating ending it all.
Throughout the entire interview, the 67-year-old pop icon seemed perfectly at ease as she delved into some of her most difficult and vulnerable experiences which have formed the bulk of her spiritual journey over the last 29 years.
While the entire episode is a fascinating watch, we’ve broken down the seven biggest bombshells from Madonna’s epic and first-ever podcast interview.
Why her concerts start notoriously late
Madonna laid blame for her extremely tardy behavior on tour to her spiritual practice.
That drove everyone crazy. My manager was like, “Why can’t we have shows on this night?” Or, “Why are you late?” Because I’m praying. I get a lot of sh*t for being late. Honestly, it’s really hard to balance being a parent, having work, having a spiritual life. You’re constantly juggling. You there’s it’s not there’s not a lot of time to rest. And if people don’t recognize that, then they’re just going to look at you in a very 1% like superficial way and go, you’re late. But you don’t understand what I was doing before I became late.
On the deaths of Prince and Michael Jackson
Madonna shared how having a meteoric rise can cause you to burn out and then made reference to the early deaths of fellow pop icons Prince, Michael Jackson, and her former lover, painter Jean-Michele Basquiat.
I would say that’s really true about many of my peers that I was lucky enough to know them. Whether that’s Prince or Michael Jackson or Jean Michelle Basquiat the painter, these are people who were channeling light but I also don’t think they understood the concept of what they were channeling and that there has to be some kind of restriction. There has to be some kind of filament. People like to take drugs, right. Why? They’re actually channeling light whether they’re tripping on acid. But it’s light with no restriction. And then that’s what kills you or burns you out.
On her near-death hospitalization for sepsis in 2023
After only mentioning it in social media posts, Madonna finally discussed her near-death experience amid a bacterial infection that had her unconscious for four days.
I was rehearsing for a tour, and I got a bacterial infection. One minute I was alive and dancing around, and the next minute I was in the ICU, unconscious for four days. They took me off the ventilator, I started to breathe on my own, and I had something called sepsis, and it can kill you.
I had no strength. I had no energy. I couldn’t get out of bed and I didn’t know when it was going to end.
On being visited by her late mother while in a coma
Madonna had a transformative experience during her hospitalization in which her mother, who passed when she was five, appeared to her while in a medically-induced coma.
I was almost there on the other side. I had a conscious moment and my mother appeared to me and she said, ‘Do you want to come with me? And I said, ‘No.’ My assistant was in the room with me, but I was still unconscious, but she heard me say ‘no’. And then when I did eventually wake up I realized that the ‘no’ was about me needing to forgive and and make good with people that I still held grudges against.
Forgiving her brother Christopher after years of estrangement
Madonna discussed her feud with her younger gay brother Christopher Ciccone, who appeared as a background dancer in “Lucky Star” and was art director of some of her tours in the ’90s. However, he wrote a tell-all book in 2008 that drove a wedge through their relationship. The pair reunited prior to his death from cancer at 63 last year.
But if someone you love deeply betrays you and does something that shows they have no consciousness in the moment they made that choice to do that, it’s a bitter pill for me to swallow. For my brother, I didn’t speak to him for, you know, for years and years. It was him being ill and reaching out to me and saying, ‘I need your help,’ and me having that moment, like, ‘Am I going to help my enemy?’ That’s how it felt. And I just did … It was such a load off my back, such a weight that was removed, baggage that I could put down to finally be able to be in a room with him and holding his hand — even if he was dying — and saying, ‘I love you, and I forgive you.’
New music inspired by her late brother
I wrote a song about him. I’m working on new music and I wrote a song called Fragile, which is about my brother. And then I wrote another song and …it’s called Forgive Yourself. But the repeating phrase, the chorus of the song, is ‘if you can’t forgive me forgive yourself’ which is something we all have to do. We have to forgive others but we also have to forgive ourselves and stop beating up on ourselves about things choices we’ve made in the past that haven’t worked out for ourselves or other people.
Her lowest point amid custody battle with Guy Ritchie
Madonna revealed how her custody battle with ex Guy Ritchie over their son Rocco led her to contemplate ending her life. While the couple divorced in 2008, a custody battle ensued in 2016 when Rocco, who was 15 at the time, chose to stay in London with his father.
I would say probably one of the most painful moments in my life where I honestly couldn’t see the forest for the trees was when I went through a custody battle with my son. And even though my marriage didn’t work out, I mean a lot of people’s marriages don’t work out. They marry the wrong people. They’re not aligned. They’re not meant for each other. Someone trying to take my child away from me was like, they might as well just kill me. That’s really how I was thinking. And I was on [The Rebel Heart] tour at the time, so I had to go on stage every night. I would just be lying on the floor of my dressing room sobbing. I really thought it was like it was the end of the world. I couldn’t take it. I just couldn’t take it. But thank God I don’t feel that way anymore.
Watch Madonna’s entire interview with Jay Shetty below:
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