Madonna Expresses Herself

February 15, 2012 | by Chris Azzopardi

With all of Madonna’s metamorphoses throughout her balls-out career, slipping in and out of cultural zeitgeists (and accents), the queen chameleon is still the master of reinvention. Just don’t tell her that.

“Please don’t throw those tired, old clichés at me,” Madonna playfully insists, nodding her head at me in half-kidding agitation. (Hey, at least it wasn’t hydrangeas.)

Her annoyance is marked with cheekiness – and a smile – that only the First Lady of Pop can pull off, and has for three decades. This is a new chapter in the indelible diva’s run, as she drops her hyped 12th album, MDNA, in March via a three-disc deal with Interscope; plans to launch an extensive world tour; does, perhaps, the gayest Super Bowl halftime ever; and releases her feature-length directorial debut W.E., a pet project that recently won her a Golden Globe for Best Original Song.

And she – sexpot, spiritualist, Material Girl – really only has one word to define herself at the moment: “Busy.” Always unpredictable, she’s not interested in breaking down the details of what’s to come. All she cares to talk about is the film, a semi-biopic on Wallis Simpson (played by Andrea Riseborough) and King Edward VIII dovetailed with a modern-day love story centered on fictionalized damsel-in-distress Wally Winthrop (Abbie Cornish).

Seated with Madonna at a Waldorf-Astoria suite in New York City on a December afternoon, one writer tells her he has a question to kick off the interview. “I’m sure you do,” she quips all-knowingly, as if to acknowledge the fact that she’s aware how much gay men go gaga over her. This is, after all, the room reserved for a small group of gay press, her first stop after a tardy arrival – “It’s all too much. That’s why I’m late! I’m late for everything now.” – and the one her longtime publicist, Liz Rosenberg, insists will put her in a good mood for the rest of the day. Madonna agrees, sighing: “Let’s start with levity.”

Madonna’s in her groove around us. She knows we get her even when she’s wielding snarky cracks. Ask her if she knows how to do the twist like the characters in her film and she responds: “Yes.” Hard pause. “Pretty simple.” Reminisce on when you last interviewed Madonna and she won’t care. “All right, let’s get down to business,” she insists, done with small-talk.

And so we do. Looking stunningly flawless, not at all her 53 years, in a deep blue dress with her now-infamous black gloves and a bracelet of four crosses to represent each one of her children, she gives us exactly what we want: Madonna. No pretense. No filter. No warm-and-fuzzy. In the interview, she talks about the challenges of being a strong woman in a man’s world, teaching her children to be unique and how outsiders can relate to her new film.

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