How Madonna made an entire cast hate her in an instant: “That bitch”
Some people have been so famous for so long that they either forget or refuse to acknowledge accepted societal etiquette, and having been an enormously wealthy superstar for 40 years, Madonna would fit neatly into that bracket.
That’s not to suggest that the ‘Queen of Pop’ doesn’t know how to behave, even if she’s not averse to a public war of words or two, but there are some things celebrities forget when they’re so used to being granted their every wish and being waited on hand and foot by a team of sycophants and hangers-on.
One of the biggest bugbears anyone with a vested interest in cinema has is people using their fucking phones during fucking screenings, not that Madonna cared. When she was in attendance for Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, she couldn’t stop texting, and she was reprimanded for her actions.
It wouldn’t have even made a blip on her radar, but she was nonetheless banned from every Alamo Drafthouse location in the United States until she apologised for her actions and embraced the proper decorum of watching a film with a packed house. Did she learn her lesson? Of course she didn’t.
A couple of years later, Madonna was seated for a performance of the massively popular Broadway musical, Hamilton, and committed the same offence. She sat there the entire time with her eyes glued to an iPad, even when the lights had been turned down to their lowest, which made her an instant enemy of the ensemble.
Creator, lyricist, and star Lin-Manuel Miranda was so affronted by her behaviour that he banned her from the backstage area, which was the first time he’d ever denied access to a famous face. Was Jonathan Groff disappointed that he never got the chance to meet the bestselling songstress? Evidently not.
“No, because that bitch was on her phone,” he answered. “You couldn’t miss it from the stage. It was a black void of the audience in front of us, and her face there, perfectly lit by the light of her iPhone through three-quarters of the show.” OK, he was happy to see her exiled, but what about Anthony Ramos?
“If you’re not enjoying it that much, you know the door’s right there,” he shared. “You ain’t gotta stay here!” Someone ruining everyone else’s time, whether it’s at the cinema or the theatre, by keeping their phone on full brightness throughout and endlessly scrolling when the rest of the audience is trying to watch, is one of the biggest pains in the arse in modern society, and Madonna wasn’t immune from scorn.
Miranda, Groff, and Ramos couldn’t have given two shits about her status as one of the world’s most iconic musicians; they just wanted her to turn the fucking phone off and enjoy the show, which was apparently too much to ask.
