Do Queen Elizabeth and her granddaughter-in-law Duchess Kate hate the Queen of Pop?
Madonna has been famously lampooned for the British accent she adopted after marrying Guy Ritchie in 2000 and moving to London — but when the pop superstar, 53, decided to direct W.E., about a controversial moment in modern British royal history, she fretted that the current royals would take serious offense.
Opening up on UK talk show The Graham Norton Show, Madonna revealed that the film — about King Edward VIII's shocking 1936 decision to abdicate the throne in order to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson — almost didn't get made.
"It was problematic and I started thinking, 'What am I doing, it's about the Royal Family," Madonna said, "And are they going to hate my guts? And am I right to throw myself into this juggernaut?'"
She forged forth with the project, despite those initial fears. "I am super proud of it, it's three years of my life," she boasted ."It was extremely time consuming, a labor of love."
And, regardless of the singer's messy romantic past — she divorced Ritchie in 2008, and, earlier, Senn Penn in 1989 — the provocateur says she's still a "romantic" at heart.
"It's not that I ever believed in perfect love," the mother of four explained. "But if you are a romantic like me, you want to be swept off your feet by a knight in shining armor. Unfortunately, we are raised on those fairytales, and even if we are sophisticated, educated, intellectually evolved human beings we still, in the back of our mind, think that Mr. Right is going to come along and we are going to live happily ever after."
Could Madonna — whose twelfth studio album, out in March, is called M.D.N.A. — see herself getting married for a third timie?
"I could actually," she said. "Yes." (She's been dating 24-year-old dancer Brahim Zaiban since late 2010.)
The Grammy winner also fessed up to squabbling with her eldest child, daughter Lourdes, 15, over the usual stuff: clothes!
"She is always sneaking into my dressing room and borrowing things when I am still sleeping," she admitted of her daughter with ex-boyfriend Carlos Leon. "She doesn't fear me at all…I have no authority!"
And when the "Erotica" singer chides her daughter for overly sexy clothing choices, it frequently backfires.
"If I say to my daughter, 'That outfit is a little bit too risqué or revealing' and she looks at me and says, 'That's rich coming from you,'" Madonna cracked. "Sometimes, you have just have to say, 'Because I said so!'"
