Inside Madonna’s bootcamp
Actors are currently competing to play the musician in her upcoming biopic. Here’s how they’re being tested
THE OPPORTUNITY TO play Madonna, in a biopic directed and co-written by the woman herself, comes once in a lifetime. No wonder everyone from Florence Pugh to Ozark’s Julia Garner are lining up to star in a film that’s said to span her early career through to her infamous and controversial Blond Ambition tour in 1991. With Madonna organising a bootcamp-style audition process, Empire breaks down what it takes to claim the top spot.
CHOREOGRAPHY
Being able to strike a pose is the minimum requirement for playing Madonna. “Troop style, beat boy and vogue” were the dance styles outlined in the original audition call-out for the Blond Ambition tour. Those auditioning — who are reportedly undergoing 11-hour choreography sessions — will be expected to keep in step with the tour’s complex and athletic moves, which included Madonna dancing among a trio of mermen during a performance of ‘Cherish’ and straddling a chair in cycling shorts during ‘Keep It Together’.
COSTUMES
The Blond Ambition tour was a showcase for Madonna’s pioneering sense of fashion. Actors can expect to don some of her famed selection of Jean Paul Gaultier conical bras and suspenders, fur-trimmed satin blazers and fishnet stockings, occasionally topped off with a sky-scraping platinum-blonde ponytail.
SINGING
Callback auditions for the role include singing sessions with Madonna. Much like her appearance, the superstar’s vocal style can change to suit different songs, meaning that frontrunners will need to do the same to pull off early-career bangers like ‘Material Girl’ and ‘Papa Don’t Preach’. As if they weren’t nervous enough.
PERSONA
This is no wallflower role; Pope John Paul II himself tried to ban the Blond Ambition tour, which most notoriously saw Madonna theatrically faux-masturbate during ‘Like A Virgin’, a milestone in a lengthy timeline of public displays of sexuality that the media simultaneously chastised and yet couldn’t get enough of. As the star once said, “Sick and perverted always appeals to me.” Learning first-hand from the woman who took the press and the Vatican in her stride is what this bootcamp is all about.