Cher is not holding back about her “Mask” director Peter Bogdanovich.
In a new interview with The Times UK, Cher, 78, said the late Bogdanovich was one of two directors that she “didn’t like” working with.
“He was an asshole,” the “Believe” singer said. “He was not nice to the girls in the film and he was so f—ing arrogant. I really, really disliked him.”
Bogdanovich directed the 1985 biographical film about Roy Lee “Rocky” Dennis, a boy who had a rare genetic disorder.
Cher, who starred in the movie alongside Sam Elliott, Eric Stoltz, and Laura Dern, remembered an unpleasant interaction she had with Bogdanovich on-set.
“He comes in and says, ‘Cher, where do you think we should film this scene?’ And I say, ‘Well, the kitchen is working pretty well, why don’t we do that again?’” she recalled. “The next morning he arrives on set, eating an egg sandwich, and starts screaming that he’s not going to let me direct this film; I’m a nobody; he can cut me out at any moment.”
“Oh yeah, he was a pig,” Cher added.
Bogdanovich, who died in 2022 at age 82, previously said that Cher was the most difficult actor he’s ever worked with.
“Well, she didn’t trust anybody, particularly men,” the director told Vulture in 2019. “She doesn’t like men. That’s why she’s named Cher: She dropped her father’s name. Sarkisian, it is. She can’t act.”
When asked what Cher thinks of him, Bogdanovich responded, “Cher doesn’t like me.”
“Well, because I didn’t like her,” he explained. “She was always looking like someone was cheating her. I came to the set one day; I said, ‘You depress me, you’re always so down and acting like somebody’s stealing from you or something.’ But finally, after about seven weeks of this, we started getting to like each other. She said, you know, we don’t watch out, we might end up liking each other. I said that would be amazing.”
“And we did end up liking each other, and then when I sued the studio, she sided with the studio, of course. That was that.”
In her Times UK interview, Cher said her other least favorite director is Frank Oz, who she worked with on 1990’s “Mermaids.”
“I actually got the guy from The Muppets fired,” she said about Oz, 80. “I said, ‘either you’re going or I’m going,’ which is a shame because he’s a really good director, but he had a thing about me. He would go, ‘At least my wife loves me!’”
The “Strong Enough” singer went on, “Ask everybody: I’m really easy to work with. I’m not arbitrary in the things I say, because it’s right to do what the director wants until you need to speak up. Meryl [Streep] says that if the director wants you to do something you don’t like, you say: yes, yes, yes, I’ll do it that way. Then you do it your way and they don’t even notice.”
“I’ve worked with Bob Altman, Mike Nichols, Norman Jewison … Really great directors whom I respect. I know when to listen,” she added.
Cher just came out with her new memoir, where she opens up about her long career in Hollywood, her marriage to Sonny Bono, and more.
“I don’t know if it was healing,” she told Entertainment Weekly about writing “Cher: The Memoir.” “While I was talking about it, it was just exasperating and tiring. I just kept thinking, ‘I don’t want to keep doing this.’ Then, there’d be something really funny, and I would go, ‘Okay, I can do this.’ But it’s not an easy thing.”
article credit
