The iconic star opens up about how tense things got on set between her and Mask director Peter Bogdanovich, while she didn’t even let it get that far with one of Mermaids’ original directors, Frank Oz.
Cher isn’t mincing words when it comes to her experiences in some of her iconic film roles, including the painfully dramatic biographical film Mask, and the lighter tone of her 1990 film with Winona Ryder and Christina Ricci, Mermaids.
The tone of the latter might have to do with the fact that Cher appeared to gain at least some control over who was behind the camera … by getting its director fired.
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The “Believe” singer opened up in a lengthy interview with The Times of London as part of her promotional tour for the first part of her just-released memoir, Cher: The Memoir, Part One.
“There are only two directors I didn’t like,” she shared. “Peter Bogdanovich and the guy from The Muppets.” The latter refers to Frank Oz, who was involved with Mermaids for a time.
“I actually got the guy from The Muppets fired,” Cher continued. “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!'”
While she didn’t offer additional details of the tension between her and Oz, she did get into just how unpleasant things got on the set of the 1985 film, Mask, based on a true story.
Cher starred as the mother of Rocky (Eric Stoltz), a teen whose facial features are distorted due to him having craniodiaphyseal dyslpasia. Sam Elliott, Laura Dern, and Estelle Getty also starred in the film, which led to Golden Globe nominations for both Cher and Stoltz.
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The classic film was helmed by director Bogdanovich, but the experience was clearly not positive for Cher. Nearly 40 years later, she still remembers it and did not mince words when talking about its director. whom she pointedly called 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,” Cher emphasized in the interview.
She went on to detail one incident where she and the director butted heads quite publicly. “He comes in and says, ‘Cher, where do you think we should film this scene?’ And I say, ‘Well, the kitchen is working pretty well, why don’t we do that again?’” 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; I’m a nobody; he can cut me out at any moment,” she continued. “Oh yeah, he was a pig.”
The interviewer asked if she was trying to get involved with directing on the film, but Cher resisted that idea. “Ask everybody: I’m really easy to work with. I’m not arbitrary in the things I say, because it’s right to do what the director wants until you need to speak up.”
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She then shared some advice she received from Meryl Streep for how to get around direction you might not be a fan of as an actor. According to Cher, Streep told her, “If the director wants you to do something you don’t like, you say: yes, yes, yes, I’ll do it that way. Then you do it your way and they don’t even notice.”
Bogdanovich passed away in 2022, but he’d previously spoken about their filming relationship, and it sounds like he didn’t like her at least as much as she clearly doesn’t like him.
“She didn’t trust anybody, particularly men. She doesn’t like men,” he told Vulture in 2019. “That’s why she’s named Cher: She dropped her father’s name. Sarkisian, it is.”
“She can’t act. She won Best Actress at Cannes because I shot her very well. And she can’t sustain a scene,” the late director continued. “She’d start off in the right direction, but she’d go off wrong somehow, very quickly.”
Bogdanovich said he opted to shoot her close up “because she’s very good in close-ups. Her eyes have the sadness of the world. You get to know her, you find out it’s self-pity, but still, it translates well in movies.”
Two years after starring in Mask, Cher won the Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Moonstruck opposite Nicolas Cage.
Cher: The Memoir, Part One is available now, with Part Two expected in 2025.
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