"He was an a**hole"— Cher talks about why she dislikes director Peter Bogdanovich

By Kinette Sumadia

Modified Nov 23, 2024 00:09 GMT

Cher's The Memoir: Part 1 is finally out, hitting shelves on November 19, with the second volume, If I Could Turn Back Time, set to follow sometime next year. As she promoted the first part of her eponymous memoir, the 78-year-old reflected on previous projects, like working on the 1985 film Mask with director Peter Bogdanovich.

Bogdanovich, who passed away in 2022, and Cher didn't have an excellent working relationship. The iconic singer opened up about it during her Friday, November 22, The Times interview while promoting her memoir. She didn't hold back on sharing what she thinks of the late director, saying:

"He was an a**hole... He was not nice to the girls in the film and he was so f**king arrogant. I really, really disliked him."

Pleading her case, Cher recalled an incident where the late director rubbed her the wrong way. She said that he asked for her opinion about filming a scene of Mask where she suggested they do the show in the kitchen because she thinks "it's working pretty well." However, the legendary singer recalled Bogdanovich going mental about not letting her direct the film the next day. 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."

The Mamma Mia actress recalled Peter Bogdanovich calling her a "nobody" and saying that he could cut her out from the film "at any moment." She added about the late director:

"Oh yeah, he was a pig."

As for Bogdanovich, he doesn't have nice things to say about working with Cher either. He told Vulture in 2019 that the Believe singer was the most difficult actress he had ever worked with, accusing that she "didn't trust anybody, especially men." He also compared her to Tatum O'Neal's performance in Paper Moon, saying that the singer couldn't compare because "she can't act."

While the late director said that the singer was "very good in close-ups," he claimed that she would "go off wrong somehow, very quickly" while filming. The singer-actress won Best Actress for Mask, but Bogdanovich took all the credit for it, telling the outlet that she only won the Cannes award "because I shot her very well."

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Besides Bogdanovich, Cher said that she was at odds with another director, Frank Oz

Elsewhere in her interview with The Times, Cher said that there are only two directors she didn't like working with, and the second one is Frank Oz. The Muppets star, who went on to direct movies like The Stepford Wives and Death at a Funeral, was supposed to direct her in the 1990 film Mermaids.

While the Emmy-winning actress admitted that he was a "really good director," there was something about Oz that led her to have him fired from the film. She told The Times:

"I actually got the guy from The Muppets [Oz] fired. 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!'"

As for the directors she likes, the iconic singer mentioned Bob Altman, Mike Nichols, and In the Heat of the Night director Norman Jewison as some of the "really great directors" whom she respects.