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COVER
The Madonna Interview
By Mel Ottenberg
Photographed by Nadia Lee Cohen
Styled by Mel Ottenberg
June 22, 2026
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Madonna
Madonna wears Jacket, Top, and Skirt Gucci. Earrings 4element. Ring Boucheron. Model on left: Suit, Shirt, Tie, Hat, and Shoes National Theater. Model in middle: Suit and Tie Rokit. Shirt Ralph Lauren. Pens Montblanc. Model on right: Suit National Theater. Sweater Celine. Glasses General Eyewear. Shoes John Lobb.
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
———
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.
Madonna
Jacket, Top, and Skirt Gucci. Ring Boucheron. Girdle What Kate Did. Stockings Wolford.
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
Jacket, Top, and Skirt Gucci. Ring Boucheron. Girdle What Kate Did. Stockings Wolford.
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.
― boners for bombs (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 29 June 2026 19:02 (six days ago)