When Madonna made Kevin Costner look like an idiot in front of the world: “Yeah, I was embarrassed by it”
Even when he was flying high as one of the industry’s most popular, bankable, and in-demand leading men, it was still a stretch to say with a straight face that Kevin Costner was cool.
Sure, he had an old-fashioned charm, plenty of screen presence, and a distinctly American type of charisma, but he was never the most fashionable superstar. Not that he cared, even if it did leave him red-faced when somebody genuinely considered cool made him look like a total dweeb in front of everyone.
In the early 1990s, when Costner was at the apex of his box office powers, Madonna was ruling the music world. The ‘Queen of Pop’ was a pioneer, a trailblazer, a bestselling artist, and a force of nature who broke boundaries, shattered barriers, and generally didn’t give a fuck what people thought about her.
One of the easiest ways to capitalise on a singer’s surging popularity is with a concert film, and Madonna followed that tried-and-trusted path when the cameras followed her on her Blond Ambition tour. The end result was Truth or Dare, and her global fame saw it become the highest-grossing documentary of all time, even if she landed a Razzie nomination for ‘Worst Actress’ despite being herself.
The celebrities were out in force, and behind-the-scenes footage saw Costner come across as a total loser. The two-time Academy Award winner greets her backstage at a Los Angeles gig, where he calls her showstopping performance “neat”. It’s a cringeworthy moment, but it somehow gets worse.
Once he’s out of view, Madonna simulates putting her finger down her throat, intimating that being praised by Kevin “Neat” Costner was testing her gag reflex. Adding insult to injury, she then adds, “Anybody who says my show is ‘neat’ has to go,” rubbing more humiliating salt into the wound.
“Yeah, I was embarrassed by it and kind of hurt by it,” he confessed to the Los Angeles Times over a decade later. “I just went back there because I was asked to go back. And I found the best word that I could. I never called it on her or whatever.”
Costner lost the minuscule cool points that he already had, but he did eventually get an apology. Ironically, he was equally embarrassed by that, too. After taking his kids to a Madonna concert in the 2000s, he suddenly found himself caught in her crosshairs all over again.
“About the third song in, the lights were down, and she said, ‘I want to apologise to someone,'” he remembered. “And all of a sudden, my face starts to get hot. And she says, ‘I want to apologise to Kevin Costner’. She just said it very simply. 98% of the audience didn’t know what she was talking about. But I really respected that.”
It was a long time coming, but he finally felt vindicated for his incredibly awkward first encounter with the pop icon. Not that he was losing any sleep over it, but watching Costner tell Madonna how “neat” her show was over 30 years later is still enough almost to make you feel sorry for how goofy the poor guy is.
