Madonna Reveals Why Her Biopic Fell Apart, Talks Netflix Series Status & New Album ‘Confessions II’

Nadia Lee Cohen / Interview 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: