Dinner with Madonna has to be quite a memorable event, no matter the situation. However, for acclaimed filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, his most famous dinner with Madonna turned into a night he’d like to forget, or at least a situation that he’d like to set straight.
In a new column on IndieWire, Almodóvar describes one of the most awkward dinner parties imaginable, where he, Madonna, and up-and-coming actor, Antonio Banderas, all dined and shared conversation. However, the dinner party would later be edited for a film titled “Truth or Dare” and would paint a not-so-flattering picture of the evening.
The filmmaker sets the scene, as he describes how he set up a huge dinner party for Madonna while she was in Madrid. However, as Almodóvar recalls, “…She had already made it very clear to me that, aside from myself, she was only interested in meeting one other guest, Antonio Banderas.”
So, while the dinner party is commencing, Madonna sits with Banderas on one side, Almodóvar on the other, with the actor’s wife, Ana Leza, sent to another, far away table. That’s when the filmmaker realized that Madonna had a film crew there, collecting footage for what would later be the documentary, “Truth or Dare.”
“Antonio’s harassment was one of the main storylines and she, obviously, edited in how she dispatched Ana Leza with only one sentence. At the end of the dinner, Ana dared to get close to our table and told the divine blonde sarcastically, ‘I see you like my husband, it doesn’t surprise me, all women like him, but I don’t mind because I am very modern.’ To which Madonna replied: ‘Get lost.’”
That’s when the conversation turned awkward.
“At some point during the dinner, Madonna told me, ‘Ask Antonio if he likes hitting women (I swear it was like that),” the director said. “I translated it for him. Antonio doesn’t say anything. He mumbles, and he pulls a face as if to say, ‘I am a Spanish gentleman, and I’ll do whatever a lady asks me to do.’ For me, it was an eloquent silence and gesture. But Madonna wanted more.”
After pressing Banderas further, more awkwardness ensued. But apparently, none of it made it to the film, painting a very different picture of the evening. Almodóvar said, “And there had to be a pandemic for the world to know what that dinner was like in reality,”
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“All this may seem frivolous, and it is…But memory is that absurd when selecting things,” he added. “I don’t mind if this seems like a settling of scores, if it had been the other way round (me filming Madonna and her team and making a film with all that material which I would then premiere around the world) I would have taken such a hit in the form of a lawsuit I’d still be recovering from it. Madonna treated us like simpletons and I had to say it one day. She didn’t ask for permission to use our images, and she even dubbed me, because my English mustn’t have been that good.”
Okay, so maybe it’s not always a great idea to have a dinner date with Madonna.
