The Mob, the heat, and more: The one project Madonna said was “difficult on every level”
You’d think the most difficult thing Madonna has ever done was continue facing up to the world when she was utterly vilified, with even the Catholic church coming for her neck. But no – it was actually standing on a balcony in Argentina.
Of course, there is a certain level of jest within this statement, because that had to pale in comparison to all the other major trials and tribulations she has overcome over the length of her life and career. But nevertheless, Madonna has remained firm on the fact that filming the 1996 movie adaptation of Evita was one of the hardest things she has ever had to do. And really, that famous balcony scene was only the tip of the iceberg.
When you’ve got a godly pop star gracing the screen as a controversial political figure, the casting of Madonna as Eva Perón, not least among those who believed that chronicling the woman’s life for slick showbiz entertainment should never have happened. By now, the singer had found herself in the all too familiar position of standing up to do something bold and being fed to the lions for it. This melting pot of stresses eventually reached its boiling point.
Although it wasn’t exactly in her media-trained disposition to fly off the handle in front of the cameras, Madonna couldn’t exactly gloss over these strains when she later came to reflect on the film. When simply asked if she found Evita difficult, she replied: “Oh, yes. That’s an understatement,” which almost tells you everything you need to know. But equally, it also seemed hard for her to pinpoint just one thing that made it an uphill struggle.
“It was difficult — it was difficult on every level,” Madonna mused. “It was difficult because we were, you know, filming in Argentina. And we were making a movie about a person that was a very controversial political figure. So there were Mob scenes about people who didn’t want us to make the movie and Mob scenes about people who wanted us to make the movie,” as if the societal chaos they were trying to depict had symbolically come back to life in reality.
But as if that wasn’t enough to contend with, there was also “the heat and the thousands of extras, and you know, we were moving around the world to different continents. And I was pregnant. And you know, it was a long shoot. And we were making a musical. I mean…” We get the point. Amid this myriad of mountains to climb, Madonna was also doing it while carrying a child. Sure, it’s a testament to the power of women, but you’d have thought she might have picked herself an easier project.
However, this simply would not embody the Madonna spirit if she did not push herself almost to the ends of the Earth in order to make something she believed in. Of course, whether that particular film adaptation of Evita was truly worth the pressure is another discussion to be had, but it proves that if anyone were to question the tenacity of the Queen of Pop after all this time, they’d only have to look to the scenes of her on that Argentine balcony to see that their doubts have always been unfounded.
