MADONNA! INTERVIEW! 2026! This is Madonna’s eleventh time on the cover of this magazine—more than any other star. HERSTORY! We shot these images late at night on the outskirts of London. Madonna named her shoot’s character Dee Dee, a fun, hard-living broad who drank prosecco, did her hair big, and blasted the Stones ’til we got kicked out. There were moments that night when I felt star power on a level I had never experienced before, if that is possible… The next afternoon, I went to M’s home for round two: a 90-minute gab sesh after hearing the upcoming album, Confessions on a Dance Floor: Part II. As a Frida Kahlo portrait glared protectively at me over Madonna’s shoulder, we talked past, present, future, prayer, dicks, nutritional yeast, and more…
THURSDAY 7 PM APRIL 9, 2026 LONDON
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MEL OTTENBERG: You look fantastic.
MADONNA: I’m not Dee Dee anymore. I miss her already. She was a good-time girl.
OTTENBERG: She was so good. And we’re going to talk about her, but first I want to ask what your perfume is because it smells so—
MADONNA: Fruity?
OTTENBERG: Yeah, it smells pretty and delicious. What is it?
MADONNA: It’s a combination of Portrait of a Lady and Radical Rose. I like to move around. My main is Portrait of a Lady, and then I add different things, depending on my mood. I like the name Portrait of a Lady, too. Because she is, sometimes.
OTTENBERG: She is. Okay, so we just listened to the album. You’d already played four songs for me when we first met.
MADONNA: Well, now it’s finished.
OTTENBERG: Let’s start at the beginning. Why this album now?
MADONNA: 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—
OTTENBERG: An indie film.
MADONNA: No. 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.
OTTENBERG: I won’t.
MADONNA: 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.”
OTTENBERG: Totally.
MADONNA: I reached out to Stuart [Price] because I thought the world is in a very dark place and people need to dance. I hadn’t worked with Stuart for a long time. We’d just done the Celebration Tour together, but besides that, I didn’t really see or speak to him for probably 15 years. I was living in New York and I reached out to him, thinking, “What if we tried to make Confessions on a Dance Floor: Part II, and reenter the world of inspirational dance music?” So I came to London and went to his studio, and we were just playing around to see if there was magic between us. I had a lot of stuff going on in my life personally. My brother was very, very, very ill, and my stepmother, with whom I’d had a very traumatic relationship throughout my entire childhood, had just died.
OTTENBERG: I’m sorry.
MADONNA: 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.
OTTENBERG: I feel like this album is meant to be.
MADONNA: Yeah, for sure, now that I’ve gotten through it and so many very important things have happened to me along the way. For instance, the song I wrote with my daughter, Lola. 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.
OTTENBERG: To have this moment.
MADONNA: Well, 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.
OTTENBERG: It starts off so fun, really showing that if you started in the club world and you got where you are from the clubs, that’s always in you.
MADONNA: And it always saved me. I have a song that’s not on the record called “What Will Save Me.” I did it with Arca and Stuart. We all talked about feeling like outsiders and how the club life and being on the dance floor make you feel like you’re part of a community, without saying anything. It saves you every time, whenever you’re feeling down, whenever you feel like you can’t get it right, whenever you feel like a failure, whatever. Go out dancing because it will save you.
OTTENBERG: Right.
MADONNA: I went through all this darkness in the beginning, writing these songs with Stuart, and then we went full circle, and I’m like, “Okay, now what happens? How do we get out of this? What happens when you walk into a nightclub or walk onto the dance floor or go to a rave?”
OTTENBERG: Because life’s heavy….
MADONNA: It can be, but I always push through and I’m a survivor.
OTTENBERG: You are! Okay, I want to talk about a song on your album, “Danceteria.”
MADONNA: Okay.
OTTENBERG: I just want to hear you tell the story. Let’s talk about that night, at that club. It’s 1982. Did you have any money in your wallet?
MADONNA: No, no, no. I had no money. I was really a scavenger. I lived, I surfed. I lived in people’s apartments. They would let me come and stay for a few months, then I would sublet someplace for six months, then I would move again. I was constantly getting kicked out. I was living in a place that was illegal. What do you call it? Not a building you can live in, but a building you can work in.
OTTENBERG: It was zoned as office space.
MADONNA: It was in the Garment District. I surfed around all those buildings, because people were making clothes and creating fabrics and designing on them and painting on them. A lot of people had lofts in these buildings, so they ended up living there illegally, and they rented out rooms. If there was a weirdo living on one floor, I’d go to the next floor. If there was a guy making porno films who wanted me to be in them and was constantly knocking on my door and freaking me out, I would be like, “I gotta go [to another floor].”
OTTENBERG: And right then, Danceteria was the place.
MADONNA: I made my demo tape of “Everybody” and I was told there was a DJ named Mark Kamins. Everyone was like, “You’ve got to go there, you’ve got to meet him, you’ve got to figure it out. And try to dress interesting because they won’t let you in if you don’t look interesting.” I was like, “Oh fuck, I don’t have any interesting clothes.” I was living in my dancer clothes because that’s why I moved to New York, to be a dancer.
OTTENBERG: Got it.
MADONNA: I probably looked completely tragic waiting in line at Danceteria. That’s when Martin [Burgoyne] 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.
OTTENBERG: Right.
MADONNA: He saw me as a complete stalker. Someone would say, “There’s Mark Kamins,” and I’d go sit next to him and say, “Hey, I know you’re the DJ here and I’ve been working on this music and I’d love to get a chance to play it for you if it’s possible.” He was cute and I was turning on the charm as much as I could, and he’d be like, “Do you know how many people bother me about wanting to play me their demos?” He left, but I kept harassing him. I just kept coming back. I made friends with Debi Mazar, who was 16 when she was working there and lying about her age. She was going to the Wilfred Academy of Hair & Beauty Culture and we hit it off right away. She used to put the elevator on hold, like press the emergency button, and come out and dance with me. She had the most incredible looks all the time. Her face was beat. Her hair was done. I kept going, “Damn, girl, how do you look so good? I have three pieces of clothing and I don’t even know how to do my makeup.” But Debi and Martin 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.
OTTENBERG: Go on.
MADONNA: He was a wonderful guy, but he did a lot of things people did in the ’80s that they shouldn’t have done. You know what I’m talking about.
OTTENBERG: Of course.
MADONNA: 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.
OTTENBERG: Please never stop.
MADONNA: From the get-go, I was like, “I’m making it. I’m going to be somebody.” Nothing could stop me. I was paying attention to shit. I also realized that if you’re partying, you’re not paying attention to shit, so I never got into that either. I’m sure I was the only sober person at Danceteria.
OTTENBERG: Yes.
MADONNA: So anyway, I brought him some coke in the bathroom, took him in the stalls, me and Debi.
OTTENBERG: You must have done some bumps with him for glamour, no?
MADONNA: Of course, but it hurt my throat. And I was like, “This isn’t a good idea for a singer. I want to have a job more than I want to have fun right now.”
OTTENBERG: Totally.
MADONNA: So anyway, we made out, we did a little blow, and then he agreed to listen to my demo. Is this too long of a story?
OTTENBERG: No. Please never stop talking.
MADONNA: One night, Michael Rosenblatt from Sire Records was there and he was in the DJ booth—I could go in the DJ booth now because we’d swapped saliva. [Laughs]
OTTENBERG: You’re “hanging out,” as they say.
MADONNA: Sure. I convinced him to play my cassette tape. Those days you could play a cassette tape as part of a DJ rig.
OTTENBERG: Had he heard it yet?
MADONNA: He listened on headphones. There were two DJs up there at the time, so he wasn’t spinning. He listened and then he got an idea. When he started mixing his set, he mixed it into a song.
OTTENBERG: Do you know what the song was?
MADONNA: It could have been Kurtis Blow or the Sugarhill Gang, or Afrika Bambaataa. So anyway, he started playing it and people kept dancing. That was the test: Did they keep dancing?
OTTENBERG: Right.
MADONNA: Because they were already dancing.
OTTENBERG: Right, do they keep dancing? Does it work?
MADONNA: Yeah, does it work? It worked, and Michael was there. They were looking at each other and they were looking at me. I was in the DJ booth. He played it a second time later in the evening, and I went down to the dance floor and danced to it, with Martin there watching over me like my guardian angel.
OTTENBERG: You’re pretty popular at this point. You’re kind of ruling.
MADONNA: No.
OTTENBERG: No, you’re new.
MADONNA: Not popular at all.
OTTENBERG: “Who is she?”
MADONNA: Yeah. Girls threw drinks at me. I wasn’t popular. I was irritating to everybody because I was a dancer and I wasn’t dancing anymore. I would just go crazy on the dance floor, getting it out of my system.
OTTENBERG: Right.
MADONNA: By myself.
OTTENBERG: Yes.
MADONNA: And then people immediately think you’re weird.
OTTENBERG: “What’s her problem?”
MADONNA: Yeah. She forgot to take her medication or something.
OTTENBERG: [Laughs]
MADONNA: Eventually Michael brought me to Seymour Stein, and that’s how I got signed to Sire Records. But getting back to Danceteria, obviously Martin was my bestie. He and Mark and Debi and lots of other people—that became my community, my friend group. We were always together. That was one of the most fabulous times of my life. You were probably around or—?
OTTENBERG: No, I’m turning 50 this month.
MADONNA: You came up post–AIDS craziness?
OTTENBERG: Well, I came up in AIDS fear. I moved to New York in 1998.
MADONNA: Oh, okay.
OTTENBERG: But when I was 14 my parents took me to [Madonna:] Truth or Dare. They took me and my 10- and 11-year-old siblings. We had floor seats.
MADONNA: What open-minded parents.
OTTENBERG: I’m very lucky. I remember walking through the concession stands and seeing all these gay guys in Daisy Dukes. I’d never seen faggots before, hanging out. And I was like, “Oh my god. Wow. I had no idea.”
MADONNA: [Laughs] That was a great, historical moment.
OTTENBERG: I was very grateful for that. Thank you for letting me go down memory lane with you, but I have a real question now.
MADONNA: Okay.
OTTENBERG: We’re back in real time. Did you guys start making the record by listening to the original Confessions?
MADONNA: Absolutely. It was about to be re-released, so we were like, “It’s got to be as good as or better than this.” I’ve made other records, like Ray of Light with William Orbit, and there’s all the stuff I do with Mirwais. I love all of them, but my sound with Stuart, I don’t even have to think about it. We just channel. That’s what I think was happening. That’s what producing means for me. You’re putting together all your tastes, your knowledge, your vision, and gathering a group of people who are aligned with you.
OTTENBERG: What’s the club of love, Madonna?
MADONNA: A place where you don’t need words to express how you feel, where you just connect to the music and have an out-of-body experience or enter a fever dream.
OTTENBERG: As I know, because I styled you yesterday for the cover, and we had such a fun time, didn’t we? [Laughs]
MADONNA: Yeah. I got to live out my housewife fantasies.
OTTENBERG: Yes. Her name was Dee Dee.
MADONNA: She was a character. We brought her some cute outfits.
OTTENBERG: We let her rip. Is there a specific reference for the Confessions II woman that gets you going? I was thinking about this yesterday during the shoot, when I put on “Big Spender” from Sweet Charity and you really fucking turned that out for me. That was one of the highlights of my career. You knew what you were doing to us.
MADONNA: I thought, “This is either going to work or I’m going to scare everybody.”
OTTENBERG: Thank you for that. I noticed you embody songs like that, or “Monkey Man,” the song that plays during Debi’s coked-out Goodfellas moment.
MADONNA: Yeah.
OTTENBERG: No one’s ever been this specific with music on a shoot ever. Respect.
MADONNA: I definitely become moods with music. I would say the Confessions on a Dance Floor girl is the girl in high school, me, that never got invited to any dances because I scared everybody, boys. I’d go to dances by myself, go crazy, and do whatever I wanted. Play whatever character I wanted, whether it was a character in a musical or—at the time, in high school, I was obsessed with David Bowie. I thought, what would David Bowie do? I’d ask myself that question all the time. And it would be like, he would give zero fucks.
OTTENBERG: Yeah.
MADONNA: He always said stuff like, “Don’t pander to the peanut gallery,” or, “When you’re in deep water and your feet are barely touching the ground and you think you’re going to drown, you’re in the right place.” That made a big impression on me. Oh my god, there was no one like him, the way he channeled his femininity and his sense of style and his knowledge of art and spirituality. He was deeply musical and soulful, and genuinely didn’t care in the most intelligent way. My girl, me, dancing to “Big Spender,” or the girl in Confessions on a Dance Floor, is the girl who’s channeling that energy. I’m going to do whatever I want.
OTTENBERG: She’s wild because she doesn’t give a fuck.
MADONNA: Mm-hmm. I can be whoever I want to be. That’s why I start the record that way. “Thanks for coming.” It’s a little confessional moment, revealing how hard it is to trust people. I never know why people like me. It’s hard to understand my place in the world, but out here on the dance floor, I feel so free. I think that’s true for a lot of people. It’s welcoming people back to that state of mind because everybody’s worried. It’s a big thing.
OTTENBERG: It’s easy to forget to go out and be with people now because most of us are addicted to our phones.
MADONNA: Because we think if we look at Instagram for two hours, we’ve actually been with somebody. It’s a deeply disturbing activity.
OTTENBERG: Yes.
MADONNA: It’s mesmerizing and also soul-destroying.
OTTENBERG: Do you doomscroll?
MADONNA: Occasionally I open Instagram and something pops up that makes me go to the next visual. And then I go, “What am I doing? I have 5,000 things to do. Get off the phone.” I have a lot of discipline when it comes to social media, simply because I grew up without it. I didn’t have Instagram until 2018 or something. I grew up without TV. I’m not a person who gravitates toward distraction. Oh my god, I make lists every night, put Post-its everywhere, and then my day is filled with sometimes boring but also very exciting activities. And I do see, 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?
OTTENBERG: Yes.
MADONNA: I keep journals. My manager gets them for me all the time. This one says “The Queen.” I go through probably three a week. I love to write. With my hand. I write all my lyrics. I see you write too…
OTTENBERG: I have to.
MADONNA: In the studio I have to write on paper and read from that paper when I’m singing. I scribble, make mistakes, rewrite, go to the next page. But I value those pages. They’re artifacts. The mind-hand connection is part of your soul in a way texting can never be. There’s no soul in texting.
OTTENBERG: There’s not.
MADONNA: I’m happy I grew up without all that, because it made me go to museums. That’s how I discovered Frida Kahlo. When you have to go out to learn and meet people, you have such a different experience in life.
OTTENBERG: Will you show me the album cover?
MADONNA: I only have it digitally.
OTTENBERG: Confessions is really one of my favorite album covers of all time.
MADONNA: Really? We didn’t think that one through too much, me and Steven [Klein], but it worked out really good.
OTTENBERG: And the Arianne [Phillips] styling, I was just like, “Oh my god.”
MADONNA: It was just my leotard and disco hair.
OTTENBERG: And not seeing the face but seeing the body and immediately knowing who it is. That outfit was so fresh, but not like anything that was in or cool in 2005. It went so hard because it was—
MADONNA: Unique.
OTTENBERG: You gave us something we didn’t know we needed.
MADONNA: Yeah. I’m looking for the cover. It references Confessions I, and I wear a lot of the same clothes, the YSL boots and the jackets Gucci made for me in every color. I don’t know if you remember that look.
OTTENBERG: Of course I remember. I’m obsessed with Confessions, forever.
MADONNA: I took it all out of my archives and brought it to the album cover photo shoot with Rafael Pavarotti.
OTTENBERG: Oh, fantastic.
MADONNA: We worked it into everything.
OTTENBERG: I love that. We were talking about A Clockwork Orange yesterday and you were telling me how that was a style reference for the “Hung Up” video.
MADONNA: Oh, yeah.
OTTENBERG: Fucking hot.
MADONNA: A Clockwork Orange also inspired Truth or Dare, when I’m singing the song “Keep It Together” and we have the bowler hats. If you go back and listen to that, I take a whole chunk of dialogue out of that movie and I say it on the microphone.
OTTENBERG: Wait.
MADONNA: Gaultier made me that cage thing.
OTTENBERG: I see the outfit.
MADONNA: Bowler hat.
OTTENBERG: I see the hat.
MADONNA: That was also inspired by A Clockwork Orange. I adapted Sly and the Family Stone’s song, “Family Affair,” then reinterpreted it through the eyes of Malcolm McDowell, the actor.
OTTENBERG: Little Alex.
MADONNA: You know how he says, “A little bit of the old in-out?” I say that through the whole song.
OTTENBERG: Fantastic.
MADONNA: That inspired a lot of my creativity, Stanley Kubrick’s movies, period.
OTTENBERG: Okay, wait. I’m curious about “We go home and it’s fragile. My sins are my savior, betrayal the test,” which are lyrics from the song you do with Lola.
MADONNA: Mm-hmm.
OTTENBERG: I really loved the “Don’t forget about me, don’t forget to be happy” parts of—
MADONNA: That’s my brother, Christopher.
OTTENBERG: It’s really beautiful.
MADONNA: Thank you.
OTTENBERG: He came to you in a dream.
MADONNA: He comes to me in many dreams. Once we were very close. If you watch Truth or Dare, you see him all the time.
OTTENBERG: Of course, yeah. That really stuck with me. And I love “My sins are my savior.” I just wrote, “Sexy, deep, ’90s fantasy.”
MADONNA: Yeah, that’s Stromae singing on it. He has such a great voice.
OTTENBERG: Beautiful voice. “I was not lost, I was just broken. They tried to take me down.” What are you talking about?
MADONNA: Narrow-minded people who are ignorant, who judge first before investigating. Society, basically. The ones that condemn me.
OTTENBERG: Have you learned to not be bothered by that?
MADONNA: Oh, it used to bother me a lot, because I was just like, “I can’t believe they’re so stupid. They don’t get it. They don’t understand.” I do a lot of provocative things, but there’s always a reason behind it and nobody bothers to investigate, which can make you want to give up on human beings. But you soon realize a lot of people don’t think critically. They don’t actually examine what they’re looking at, what they’re listening to. They’re not tuned in to the subtleties and the layers of meanings that exist. And they certainly don’t do it when it comes from a female. Picasso was a total shit to women and behaved badly and was a spoiled brat and all those things, but he was a brilliant painter. People looked past all that because he made great paintings. I’m not comparing myself to Picasso, but when a woman does it, it’s—now people are more open-minded about women doing provocative things.
OTTENBERG: In some ways. I mean, they’re open-minded about women doing things you did first.
MADONNA: They’re open-minded about women being naked.
OTTENBERG: Yes.
MADONNA: Because 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.
OTTENBERG: Yes. And talking about feelings.
MADONNA: Exactly.
OTTENBERG: You write songs about your experience in a way that’s personal to you but relatable for everyone.
MADONNA: It’s a memoir. I’ve been writing about my past ever since I started writing my script. The Celebration Tour was a retrospective of my entire music career. I feel like my brain is tuned into memory and how it’s all connected and where it has brought me. The past is such an important part of my life—not to dwell in, but to learn from and share with other people.
OTTENBERG: Are you more attuned to your creative past now? Like it makes sense to go back to make something new?
MADONNA: To go back, but also to do it how I want to do it, not the way I think my audience wants to hear all those old songs. I want to fuck it up. You know what I mean? I want to do those old songs and do them in a completely different way. Or I want to examine their deeper meaning.
OTTENBERG: Oh, I think you really did that. These songs are cunt.
MADONNA: And I referenced a lot of my past throughout the record, even with actual lyrics. You know what I mean?
OTTENBERG: In “LES Girl” you’re really talking about your life. Your fans are hearing facts about you, so it hits in a different way. Who’s that Lower East Side boy?
MADONNA: This guy I was dating who was a musician and I was in love with. He was really an archetype.
OTTENBERG: Does he have a name?
MADONNA: Yeah, but I’m not going to say it.
OTTENBERG: Okay. Was he hot?
MADONNA: If he had a Marlon Brando face, he’s hot. Who’s hotter than Marlon Brando?
OTTENBERG: Abso-fucking-lutely.
MADONNA: Can I eat popcorn while I’m talking?
OTTENBERG: Of course. People, she’s eating popcorn.
MADONNA: My favorite food, you can say that.
OTTENBERG: I’ve known forever.
MADONNA: I haven’t had it for a week.
OTTENBERG: The Patrick Demarchelier picture of you eating popcorn in your Lake Hollywood home in a Patrick Kelly gown styled by André Leon Talley—
MADONNA: Very good.
OTTENBERG: I know what the fuck I’m talking about, Madonna. I wouldn’t be the editor of Interview without Madonna. When was the last time you confessed?
MADONNA: Well, every song on this record is—not every song. Some are just joy. “Love Sensation” is just joy. But a lot of the songs here are confessional.
OTTENBERG: What about the last time you confessed in a church?
MADONNA: Oh, that’s been a while.
OTTENBERG: Do you have a relationship with organized religion?
MADONNA: Well, I was raised a Catholic and I’m a cultural Catholic. You know what I mean?
OTTENBERG: Yes.
MADONNA: When I go to Italy, I go to churches. I smell the incense, I light a candle. I do all the things I’m familiar with because they’re evocative and they make me feel a type of way. Sorry.
OTTENBERG: That’s okay.
MADONNA: I realize how pagan Catholicism is. Beautiful religion. Going to churches and seeing all these paintings, a naked man on a cross, bleeding, suffering, and his mother crying. So many dramatic visuals.
OTTENBERG: Yeah.
MADONNA: And then after you have your communion, you receive the body and blood of Christ. That’s dark. My mother was very religious. I don’t practice it, but I still feel connected to it.
OTTENBERG: What about god?
MADONNA: What about them?
OTTENBERG: Your connection. Like, do you meditate? Do you—
MADONNA: Pray.
OTTENBERG: You pray?
MADONNA: Mm-hmm. It’s a combination of meditation, just stating my intentions for the day, positive affirmations, and asking the universe or god or the archangels, or the angels, to come to me and protect me and/or help me attain something. You know I study Kabbalah and I have for many years. It’s the mystical interpretation of the Old Testament. So I do take part in a lot of holidays or occasions within the lunar calendar that look like Judaism.
OTTENBERG: I’m Jewish. I mean, I’m more culturally Jewish, but I’m bar mitzvahed.
MADONNA: You’re circumcised.
OTTENBERG: The point is I’m circumcised. What do you put on your popcorn?
MADONNA: Brewer’s yeast. Do you want some?
OTTENBERG: I’d love some. Thank you so much.
MADONNA: I should have offered it to you.
OTTENBERG: No, no, no.
MADONNA: You might not like it.
OTTENBERG: You don’t need to offer it to me.
MADONNA: It’s very good.
OTTENBERG: Thank you. I also love popcorn. Thank you for giving it to me.
MADONNA: It’s high in B vitamins. Have you ever had brewer’s yeast?
OTTENBERG: Wait, is this nutritional yeast?
MADONNA: Yeah.
OTTENBERG: Oh my god. I hate nutritional yeast. My boyfriend’s always trying to put it on everything. He’s always telling me it’s so good on popcorn. Now that Madonna does it, I will do it.
MADONNA: Okay, good. I have influenced you again.
OTTENBERG: Oh, wow. You’ve really seduced me with this. If I was going to buy you flowers—and I feel like you have a very specific flower diva thing—what’s your flower order?
MADONNA: Gardenias. They’re rare and they have the most heavenly smell. After that…Gosh.
OTTENBERG: What’s that? What’s that right there?
MADONNA: Peonies. Tulips. Are these—
OTTENBERG: It’s like a dark red tulip… Wait.
MADONNA: No, I don’t know what that is.
OTTENBERG: Is that a tulip?
MADONNA: This is a tulip. I like peonies. I like Sweet William. I like—how do you pronounce it? Anemones?
OTTENBERG: Anemones, yeah.
MADONNA: Anemones. Not your enemy, but anemones. Tulips. I don’t know. I’m very specific about flowers, but as you know, everybody knows not to bring me hydrangeas.
OTTENBERG: Okay. No hydrangeas. Do you sleep well?
MADONNA: No.
OTTENBERG: What do you do to deal with that? I sometimes pray when I wake up in the middle of the night.
MADONNA: Pray. Meditate. Watch an Italian film because it makes me feel cozy and reminds me of my childhood. I soak my feet in the bidet.I sit on the toilet. I put warm water and magnesium salt in the bidet and I just—
OTTENBERG: Soak.
MADONNA: It pulls me down.
OTTENBERG: Is there a movie you saw recently that really turned you out?
MADONNA: Yeah, I was blown away by Bugonia. What a genius. I love all his [Yorgos Lanthimos’s] movies.
OTTENBERG: Have you seen Dogtooth? It’s maybe his second movie. You’ll be into it. It’s in Greek. Did you see Sirāt?
MADONNA: Yeah.
OTTENBERG: I loved it.
MADONNA: I loved it, but I was really bummed out about the ending. I wanted him to get on that train and find his daughter. All the suffering he’d been through.
OTTENBERG: I know. Wait, what’s your diet? You’re still very fit.
MADONNA: Popcorn. [Laughs]
OTTENBERG: You must work out every day.
MADONNA: I didn’t today. I’m tired as fuck.
OTTENBERG: Did you yesterday before our shoot?
MADONNA: No, but I work out regularly.
OTTENBERG: What do you do?
MADONNA: Well, I have a bad knee now. I have no cartilage in it, thanks to dancing for so long in high heels and running on pavement and doing Ashtanga yoga. Up until a year ago, I was jumping on trampolines and doing dance cardio and doing a lot of what a doctor would call loading on my joints. Can’t do that anymore. So now I do Peloton bikes and the Versa Climber and high-intensity circuit training. I ride my bike outside a lot. I dance.
OTTENBERG: You look great.
MADONNA: Thank you.
OTTENBERG: I’m really having fun talking to you, Madonna. Does anyone call you Madonna? I just love calling you Madonna because I’m with Madonna.
MADONNA: My father and my relatives, yeah.
OTTENBERG: [Laughs] So basically, I’m a big square. I’ll start calling you M.
MADONNA: When people say my name, I’m taken aback because everyone just says M.
OTTENBERG: Do you want to stay in London because America’s so fucked up?
MADONNA: Well, I didn’t move here because America’s so fucked up. Even here, America’s so fucked up. We’re not that far. I moved here because I wanted to work with Stuart nonstop and not keep flying back and forth. We love football in this house. We are Chelsea fans and it’s a lot easier to go to games if you live in London.
OTTENBERG: Right.
MADONNA: I like my house here, but I never stay anywhere more than three years. I get sick of it. After COVID, I went to New York. Now I’m in London. I like to move all he time. I have to figure out the schools. I have to find out what I’m going to do with my time. Who am I going to work with? Who’s my community? Constantly staying out of my comfort zone and not sinking into comfort keeps me feeling alive. I’m like a gypsy.
OTTENBERG: She’s a gypsy.
MADONNA: New York’s kind of boring right now.
OTTENBERG: I like being in New York, but I’m nesting. I went dancing three times last year. I grew up in the clubs, and once you’re that person—but fuck, I never go out.
MADONNA: I don’t miss going out in New York, but I do miss Central Park, and I really miss the Met because I used to live on 81st Street.
OTTENBERG: Yeah. You’re fun to interview.
MADONNA: That’s good to know.
OTTENBERG: I just love your vibe. You’re Madonna. Who are you texting right now?
MADONNA: My assistant, because I have to have a meeting with Geordon [Nicol] and Stuart about remixes and also clubs we’re going to go to.
OTTENBERG: Nice. Do the thing.
MADONNA: Vibe with the people.
OTTENBERG: When you’re working out, are you still deep into ’90s house and stuff?
MADONNA: Yeah. Confessions I is killer to work out to.
OTTENBERG: Of course.
MADONNA: The new one, killer. In fact, I curated the record based on how much it made me move. And how I felt.
OTTENBERG: Do we know how long the album is?
MADONNA: An hour and five minutes. And that’s how long my workout is. It’s perfect.
OTTENBERG: I love that.
MADONNA: When we get to “LES Girl,” I’m stretching. I’m crying and I’m stretching.
OTTENBERG: She’s crying. She’s stretching.
MADONNA: I’m lonely. [Laughs]
OTTENBERG: Well, the album is relentless. It keeps your fucking body moving.
MADONNA: Good.
OTTENBERG: Who made the boots you’re wearing right now?
MADONNA: You know what? I put these on and said, “I bet he’s going to ask me.” I don’t fucking know. Somebody not important.
OTTENBERG: Okay. Let me look. I’m looking at the inside of Madonna’s shoe. Oh. It’s Diesel. And then the pants and tank top are Rick Owens, right?
MADONNA: Of course.
OTTENBERG: The glasses you got in a thrift store in Tokyo. You told me yesterday. I really like them. Lastly, you really have great hair. You were born with great hair, right?
MADONNA: Yeah.
OTTENBERG: You don’t have gray hair.
MADONNA: I do.
OTTENBERG: You do?
MADONNA: A little bit.
OTTENBERG: Okay, but when you’re not looking at the roots, it just seems like—
MADONNA: It’s there. I’m surprised I have any hair, based on all the bleaching I’ve done over the years.
OTTENBERG: Wait, how was your Venice trip? You were shooting The Studio.
MADONNA: It was interesting to be back at the scene of the crime, because that’s where I filmed my “Like a Virgin” video.
OTTENBERG: Of course.
MADONNA: I had to relive the experience.
OTTENBERG: You had to.
MADONNA: I had to get in that gondola with Julia Garner, who was supposed to be playing me.
OTTENBERG: Yes. Do you remember doing that video?
MADONNA: Hell yeah.
OTTENBERG: You were so hot. It’s just real pussy, that video.
MADONNA: [Laughs]
OTTENBERG: It’s like a perfect Italian uncut cock.
MADONNA: Yeah.
OTTENBERG: A gondola and a lion.
MADONNA: Everything you need for a good time. [Laughs]
OTTENBERG: Oh, god. You in 1984 is so insane. You really did it. You’re still doing it. This album’s fucking hot.
MADONNA: I’m glad you like it.
OTTENBERG: I really like it. Oh, wait. While you’re at your desk, I do have one request.
MADONNA: What’s up?
OTTENBERG: I was looking for your Herb Ritts Interview cover when I was at home packing, because it’s the best, the one where you’re grabbing your crotch. It’s missing, but I did find an unopened Sex book and I was wondering if you would be so kind as to open it and sign it.
MADONNA: Sure.
OTTENBERG: Thanks, Madonna. [Laughs] The perks of the job. Okay, you guys. Madonna’s going to open the Sex book for me. She’s using a scissor.
MADONNA: Not my teeth. We can’t rip it up. This is art. You’re not even supposed to open it.
OTTENBERG: The Sex book came out when I was in 10th grade and—
MADONNA: Did you read it or just—
OTTENBERG: Of course. We were all looking at it in study hall and getting so horny. Then this guy invited me over after school and I was like, “I’m going to finally lose my virginity.” And then he was like, “Actually, let’s not hang out.” And I was like, “Ah.”
MADONNA: No, what?
OTTENBERG: It’s actually the guy I lost my virginity to, but not until years later.
MADONNA: How many years later?
OTTENBERG: I would say two years later.
MADONNA: Wow, it’s a long time ago.
OTTENBERG: I know babe. It was the early ’90s too. No one was fucking.
MADONNA: They weren’t?
OTTENBERG: Or we weren’t. I was scared of AIDS, and I’m a teenager.
MADONNA: Yeah.
OTTENBERG: Okay, we’ve got it. The book is coming out.
MADONNA: The baby’s getting born.
OTTENBERG: She’s brand new. My original copy was stolen long ago.
MADONNA: Oh, I’m sorry. Do you ever see Tony Ward?
OTTENBERG: I do. I’m truly starstruck. I can’t even talk to him.
MADONNA: He’s incredible. [Madonna signs the copy of Sex] Okay. Do you want to read it?
OTTENBERG: I’ll read it later. Thanks for being our Summer 2026 cover star.
MADONNA: My pleasure. I have many fond memories of the magazine.
OTTENBERG: Wait, do you have any passing Andy Warhol memories?
MADONNA: He used to tape record everything. Every conversation. You know that, right?
OTTENBERG: Of course.
MADONNA: It didn’t really bother me. I wasn’t thinking about what was going to happen in my life, so I didn’t care. But Basquiat used to get really mad at him. He would do really irritating things to Warhol to get him to not be able to use the tape or just shut it off. And Warhol’s one-word answers were insane.
OTTENBERG: Yeah.
MADONNA: He really had that down to an art form.
OTTENBERG: One hundred percent.
MADONNA: And back in the day, when you look at interviews with him, or even interviews with Basquiat, they’re so—the on-camera ones where he thinks for a short time and just goes… “No.”
OTTENBERG: Yeah.
MADONNA: So genius.
OTTENBERG: He’s the best.
MADONNA: Because mostly stupid people are doing interviews.
OTTENBERG: One hundred percent. The vibes were beyond. And we’re here for the vibes. You gave me life and now I’m going home.
MADONNA: And you give me life. Thank you. Tell New York I said hi.
OTTENBERG: Okay. Bye.
MADONNA: Bye, Mel. Have a safe trip.
———
Male Extras Stylist: Gary David Moore at Artistry.
Extra Models: Necati, Hervé, Colin, and Ben.
Hair: Eugene Souleiman at Streeters.
Makeup: Marcelo Gutierrez using KIKO Milano at Huxley.
Nails: Naomi Yasuda at Forward Artists.
Skin Prep: Jasmina Vico at The Only Agency.
Extra’s Grooming: Liz Taw at The Wall Group.
Production Design: Danny Hyland.
Choreography: Eric Christinson at Parent.
Fashion Consultant to Madonna: Sadie Davies.
Market Direction: Lucy Gaston.
Tailor: Michelle Warner.
1st Lighting Assistant: David López Osuna.
2nd Lighting Assistant: Callum Su.
Digital Operation: Luke Fullalove.
Market Assistant: Nicholson Baird.
Styling Assistant: Douglas Miller, Harry Langford, Leonor Carvalho, and Sanda Bell.
Hair Assistant: Carlo Avena.
Makeup Assistants: Elise Priestley and Luz Giraldo.
Extra’s Grooming Assistant: Jessica Hau.
Fashion Interns: Amber Adams and Mansa Hayer.
Art Assistants: Billie Browne, Tom Hope, and Miranda Latimer.
Production Direction: Alexandra Weiss.
Executive Production: Carlota Ruiz de Velasco.
Photography Production: Georgia Ford.
Production: Rosie Cartwright.
Extra’s Casting Director: Emma Matell.
Production Manager: Rémi Villard.
Production Coordinator: Adam Wells.
Casting Assistant: Oliwia Jancerowicz.
Production Assistants: Violette Manon and Darnell Joseph.
Production Intern: Ha Chu.
Post-production: Kushtrim Kunushevci and Art Process.
Graphic Design: Hudson Shively.
Location: Salt Locations.
Special Thanks: The Rosewood London, Kettner’s, Kodak, The Orchard Digital, and Labyrinth Films.