Cher made a memorable appearance on the Today show, alright.
While sitting down with Hoda Kotb on the NBC news series for a wide-ranging live interview on Tuesday, Nov. 19 to promote her new memoir, the 78-year-old music icon dropped the F-word, leaving the studio murmuring and Kotb quickly trying to make light of the swear word snafu.
“Oh!” Kotb gasped immediately, laughing. “OK… we didn’t have the seven-second [delay]! But we will get for the next feed!”
All started when Kotb asked Cher about the advice she received from longtime friend Lucille Ball in the wake of her 1975 split from former husband (and TV co-host) Sonny Bono.
In Cher’s defense, she had warned Kotb that the answer wasn’t appropriate for at-home audiences. “I can’t say it on TV,” she said, before asking the Today co-anchor if producers were “going to bleep it.”
“We’ll bleep it!” Kotb, 60, insisted.
“OK…” Cher said, proceeding with her story. She then recalled reaching out to the I Love Lucy star, who herself had gone through a public breakup with husband and costar Desi Arnaz 15 years earlier. “I said, ‘Lucy, I’m calling you because to my knowledge, there’s never been a situation besides mine except yours,’ ” Cher said. “And she said, “F— him. You’re the one with the talent!’ “
After saying the word and being told it wasn’t bleeped, Cher rightfully turned to Kotb and said, “Well you said I could!”
“I should have bleeped it myself!” Kotb laughed. “Bleep!”
That moment aside, the rest of Cher’s appearance on Today was filed with juicy revelations about the legendary entertainer’s early days, which she outlines in Cher: The Memoir, Part 1, out today.
One of those foreshadowed what would happen later on the show. At the top of the interview, Cher referenced “making mistakes in public constantly” when she and Sonny first got together, she just 16 years old and he, 27.
“Do you care when you make mistakes in public?” Kotb asked Cher.
“Well, I think I used to but… I just don’t think I do anymore,” Cher said. “What are they going to do to me now? I’m 78! What are they going to do to me?!”
She went on to discuss her difficult upbringing before tracing the trajectory of her romance with Bono, who died in 1998 at the age of 62 in a skiing accident. when the two divorced, he famously left her with nothing but “a car and clothes.”
“He took it all. He took it all,” Cher said, noting how Bono — later, the Representative from California in Congress from 1997 through 1999 — ran the show when the two dated.
“I was just, I was like, I don’t know, I was not an employee, that’s for sure, but I didn’t have any freedom,” Cher said. “We had a company that I didn’t even know was a company it was called Cher Enterprises. And I… it was like very Born Yesterday, I’m signing everything and I have no idea what I’m signing.”
Cher claimed that Bono, ultimately, “just didn’t care about me.”
“I said, ‘I was there with you!’ ” Cher remembered. “And I said, ‘Just tell me one thing’ — and I still to this day, if he came back, that’s what I’d ask him — ‘What was the moment you thought it’d be right to take all my money?’ “
“Did he ever have an answer as to why he did it?” Kotb asked.
“Not really,” said Cher. “I don’t think he wanted to go there. Because how do you answer that?”
