Pop icon Cher shared two key words of advice Lucille Ball gave her about her marital and professional strife with her late ex, Sonny Bono: “F--- him.”
During an appearance on NBC’s The Today Show on Monday, co-host Hoda Kotb asked the songstress about reaching out to television legend Ball in the 1970s as her romantic and musical partnership with Bono was cratering.
“What did she tell you to do?” Kotb asked.
Cher replied, “I can’t say it on TV.” But Kotb assured her: “We’ll bleep it.”
The NBC morning talk show, however, was not ready with a seven-second delay during the live broadcast.
Ball’s salty wisdom went out on the airwaves uncensored.
When Kotb and members of the crew erupted in laughter, realizing “we didn’t have the seven-second [delay],” a poised Cher correctly pointed out, “Well, you said I could.”
It was fitting, given the “If I Could Turn Back Time” and “Strong Enough” hitmaker was on the show to promote the first volume of her candid autobiography, Cher: The Memoir.
In the book, she recalls Bono—her husband from 1964 to 1975 and partner in the 60s and 70s duo Sonny & Cher—as “charming and funny” but controlling of her personal and financial affairs.
The “possessive” Bono didn’t like her going out dancing on her own and, she says, siphoned all the money they earned from their hit songs and television shows into his bank account.
“He left me with a car and clothes,” she told Kotb, adding that if Bono were still alive, she’d ask him, “What was the moment you thought it would be all right to take all my money?”
Ball, who died in 1989 and also had a famous falling out with her romantic and professional partner Desi Arnaz, was there to urge Cher to have faith in going it alone.
“You’re the one with the talent,” she told the singer, in addition to offering the four-letter word, Cher recalled.
She paid the favor forward, encouraging another superstar to leave a doomed relationship.
Cher writes that, when Tina Turner was a guest on her eponymous 1970s variety show, the R&B legend came into her dressing room to ask for makeup to conceal a bruise on her arm.
She was then in an abusive marriage with her then-musical partner, Ike Turner.
“She sat down while I looked for it and then quietly said, very straightforward, ‘Tell me how you left him,’” Cher recounted. “I looked at her and told her, ‘I just walked out and kept going.’”
Both would go on to release massive hit singles as solo artists.
