Despite her comfortable lifestyle, there was still the nagging problem with which Madonna was so well acquainted: the burden of fame itself. Those fans who had migrated to this strange land “tormented” (her word) and “stalked” (again, her word) her when she wasn’t at her weekend home but at her hotel, closer to the set, turning it into a virtual prison. A group of young, determined admirers kept a steady vigil outside the window of their idol’s second floor suite, chanting and serenading the object of their obsession. “I slept like shit,” Madonna complained. “The children outside my window came at two-hour intervals all through the night to beckon me to my balcony and profess undying love . . . Shakespeare this was not.”
Leaving the hotel proved even more difficult. Each time Madonna exited, the crowds rushed her. “Unfortunately five hundred screaming fans made my departure almost impossible,” she said later, describing the scene. Once, while attempting a quick getaway one afternoon, she and her entourage sped away in a car only to discover that a young girl was holding on for dear life to the roof of the vehicle. “So we stopped and pulled her off as she kicked and screamed and cried that she loved me,” Madonna said. “I wanted to give her the business card of my shrink but my driver drove away too fast.”
The stress, however, didn’t dissuade Madonna from sticking to a strict agenda in order to continue to better herself during production. Since she would be called upon not only to sing, but to dance and, of course, act, she worked diligently to be at peak form in all three areas.
As for her acting, in order to become absorbed by the complicated character of Evita, Madonna traveled about Argentina meeting people who had known the real Eva Perón — diplomats, intellectuals, ministers and even a few of her childhood friends. “Of course, some refuse to meet me,” Madonna said at the time. However, to those who would agree to talk to her, Madonna asked dozens of well-thought-out questions about the way Evita looked, the food she ate, the manner in which she behaved and what she enjoyed doing in her spare time. So grateful for the information she was receiving, she would kiss some of her interviewees on the nose, others gently on the lips. “It was fun to be the interviewer for a change,” she laughed. As a result of this kind of research, Madonna began to understand subtle character traits she sensed would be necessary to guarantee her best performance of Eva Perón.
*
Filming of Evita began on February 13, 1996. In the first days of production Madonna became aware of the reality of how excruciating it was going to be to put all of her hard-earned, newfound acting, singing and dancing skills to the test on the Evita set. It was swelteringly hot in Buenos Aires in February and Madonna, as the fifteen-year-old Eva in her period costume and uncomfortable wig, on the first day of shooting was required to do take after take while saying good-bye to her family on the way to the big city. An ancient train billowed out a steady stream of noxious smoke and hot winds blew dust into her mouth as she lipsynched to her prerecorded song. It was a miserable experience, and only a foreshadowing of things to come.
In the days that followed, Madonna was required to spend long days in the intense sun alternating between waiting around for the proper light to film and performing in complicated song-and-dance numbers. “I was dying from heat exhaustion and being made a meal of by ants and flies and hornets,” she said later.
Madonna was shooting six days a week and rehearsing on her day off. As filming dragged on in Buenos Aires she began feeling more and more lonely and alienated. “My family and friends are the people in the movie,” she said at the time. “They have seen me bare my soul and yet they know nothing about me.” She was also feeling dizzy and nauseous every day, conditions she blamed on the incredible heat.
Her moodiness aside, Madonna continued to prove herself the consummate professional while actually doing her job in front of the cameras. Cast and crew members, some grudgingly, couldn’t help but admire her total commitment to the project. Even Jonathan Pryce — who played Evita’s husband Juan Perón and who said after the first few days of working with her that he had never worked with anyone quite as rude — eventually found good things to say about her. “She’s a strong, dynamic force and I can only admire that,” he admitted. “I’ve grown to like her a lot. People have preconceptions about her due to the media but you soon learn she’s a regular person. True, she doesn’t discourage the media too much, but there’s a lot of myth created around her.”
Adding to Madonna’s turmoil was the fact that Antonio Banderas’s girlfriend, the actress Melanie Griffith, had become an annoyance. As soon as Banderas was cast as the movie’s narrator, Ché, Madonna began hearing from certain associates of hers that Melanie Griffith was unhappy. Because Madonna is widely viewed as a “man killer,” Melanie was concerned that her boyfriend would fall prey to her, especially since Madonna had made it clear in her Truth or Dare film that she fancied Banderas and thought he was “very sexy.” (She also hastened to add, “He must have a really small penis because no one is that perfect.”)
“What I don’t need right now is a jealous girlfriend,” Madonna told Alan Parker, according to one of Parker’s associates. “I’m not even interested in Antonio. That crack in Truth or Dare was just a stupid joke. Antonio is too strait-laced for me.” She was clearly upset. Alan Parker rested his forehead against Madonna’s in an attempt to comfort her. Then, he kissed her on the nose and walked away. She stood in place, probably feeling that she had just been treated in a condescending manner.
Later, when Madonna was told that Melanie would be accompanying her boyfriend to Argentina, she couldn’t believe it. “How could a woman be that insecure?” she asked. “If it were me, and he was my boyfriend, and I was worried about another woman — I’d say, ‘Hey, go get her, tiger . . . and then get the fuck out.’ And that would be the end of it.”
Shortly before filming began, Madonna took matters into her own hands and decided to call Melanie Griffith.
“I understand that there have been some rumors,” she reportedly told her, “and I just want you to know that they’re completely ridiculous. I actually can’t wait for you to get here, Melanie. We’ll have fun!” Melanie’s reaction to the call is unknown. After she hung up, though, Madonna turned to an associate and said, “Well, that should take care of that. And if it doesn’t, I guess I’ll just have to deal with her when she gets to Argentina with her henpecked boyfriend.”
Despite having received the conciliatory telephone call from Madonna, Melanie was still distant toward her when she finally did arrive on the set. “It seemed as if she didn’t trust her,” said Louise Keith, a Los Angeles – based friend of Griffith’s. “Madonna was certainly flirty toward Antonio, but I think it was harmless and just the way Madonna is. However, Melanie didn’t like it. She told me that Madonna did everything she could do to win her over, but Melanie wasn’t giving in to her. ‘I don’t want to socialize with her, not really,’ Melanie said when asked by one of Madonna’s ‘handlers’ if she might like to join Madonna for lunch. Well, that really pissed off Madonna. Actually, I don’t think they said two words to each other the whole time Melanie was there, a couple of weeks. Instead, they just shot each other frosty glares whenever they were in each other’s company.”
A crew member later recalled, “Madonna couldn’t contain herself and she blurted out, ‘Melanie hates me.’ She told Parker, ‘She won’t accept an invitation if I’m in the same room. I don’t know what Banderas sees in her but she’s got him by the balls.’”
For publication, Madonna made light of the Melanie Griffith situation. In writing about the incident in Vanity Fair, Madonna refused even to mention Melanie’s name: “The press is trying to make a big deal about my competing with his [Banderas’s] girlfriend,” she wrote, “which is ludicrous because everyone knows I would never date a man who wears cowboy boots.”
For her part, Melanie remained diplomatic with the media. In fact, Griffith told the author that she was instrumental in smoothing the working relationship between her
husband and Madonna. “They say she can be difficult, but I understand her,” says Melanie Griffith. “In fact, I think I understand her better than Antonio, being a woman in this business. I know that she wants things perfect but that some men don’t want to listen to her opinion precisely because she is a woman. Do you know how frustrating that is? I told Antonio to listen to her instincts. She has very good instincts. He did.
“Of course they never had an affair,” Melanie said. “Would I tolerate such a thing? No, I would not.”
Madonna’s enthusiasm for the Evita project reemerged when the production moved to the location of her dreams — the balcony of the Casa Rosada, which was the shooting location for which she had pleaded with the president of Argentina, Carlos Menem, for permission to shoot. To make the scene as visually dynamic as possible, the company used every extra available, a total of 4,000. When Madonna walked onto the balcony, she couldn’t help but gasp in awe of her surroundings. Looking down from the balcony, as far as the eye could see were . . . people. True, they were hired hands, but they must have seemed like fans just the same. When she began to mouth the words to the prerecorded “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” this audience erupted into unbridled cheers.
After the all-night shoot, Madonna was so exhilarated by her work she could barely speak. As the sun rose, the cast and crew quietly hugged each other. In spite of the difficulties they had been experiencing, on this morning they seemed to feel a keen sense of triumph. The filming of the many difficult Buenos Aires segments of the movie was finally coming to a close and now, after the emotional night of shooting at the Casa Rosada, everyone felt as if they were actually accomplishing what they had set out to do. Maybe things would work out after all. Maybe they really were working together to create something extremely special. After having sunk to such a desperate low only a few days earlier, everyone’s morale was now suddenly elevated to a new high.
However, Evita was far from complete. After a few days of rest, the entire company would move to Hungary for many more weeks of grueling work. Once there, a new problem would arise, and it would be one that no one could have anticipated . . . and which, at least for the moment, only the leading lady suspected: Madonna was pregnant.
Carlos Leon
In mid-March, with the filming of the Argentina scenes of Evita completed, Madonna flew back to America for a few days of rest before continuing on to Budapest. In Miami, she sailed, rode her bike and watched a Mike Tyson fight on television while lounging around in her nightgown, eating ice cream and reading Shakespeare sonnets. Then she headed to New York for a couple of days of shopping. All of this she dutifully reported in the March 19 entry for her “diary,” published in Vanity Fair. What she did not report is that she also scheduled a visit to her doctor, who then informed her that she was pregnant. “I was stunned when I saw on the ultrasound a tiny living creature spinning around my womb,” she later recalled. “Tap-dancing, I think. Waving its tiny arms around and trying to suck its thumb. I could have sworn I heard it laughing. The pure and joyful laughter of a child. As if to say, ‘Ha-ha, I fooled you.’”
Actually, she had been talking about wanting a baby for years, but at the time of her marriage to Sean Penn, with her career progressing at a rapid pace, she kept postponing a pregnancy with her temperamental husband. She said that she regretted the abortions she’d had and that she considered the loss of those babies like missing fragments of herself she was not able to restore. She was concerned, now, that in her quest for success and fame, she had missed out on something she may have valued even more if she’d just given it a chance: motherhood. The harsh choice she felt she had — to be either a success or a mother — is uniquely a woman’s, and one she was loath to make. “I want it all,” Madonna said. “I don’t know if I can have it all, but I do know that I want it all.”
In newspaper articles throughout 1995, Madonna had spoken longingly of having a baby, but she was careful to add that she didn’t want to focus on becoming pregnant until after she finished her dream role in Evita. The thirty-seven-year-old Madonna then began hinting that she was contemplating getting a sperm donor to help her have the child. She had joked to reporter Forrest Sawyer on the American television program Prime Time Live that her biological clock was ticking so loudly that she was going to put an ad out for a suitable man to sire her baby, to “take care of the fatherhood gig. I’m sure I’ll meet the right guy,” she said. “I’m sure of it.” She also added, in a serious tone, that without a child she felt “a longing, a feeling of emptiness.”
On Wednesday January 10, 1996, Madonna had a rendezvous with Sean Penn at the Carlyle Hotel in New York. The two stayed in the room together for twenty-one and a half hours, according to reporters waiting for her finally to emerge. Those closest to Madonna and Penn now say that she was trying to talk Penn into having a baby with her. “I’ve had a lot of men since our marriage ended, but you’re the only one I want as a father to my children,” she said, according to a friend of Penn’s. “You’re the only man I’ve ever truly loved, Sean, and you know it.”
“She really tried to talk him into it, saying that she still loves him but understands that the two of them have no future. Still, he was just the kind of man, she said, that she wanted to have father her baby. Sean really considered it. But, in the end, he didn’t think it would be a good idea.”
Penn, who already had two children by his second wife, Robin Wright, declined Madonna’s offer.
However, she seemed more determined than ever to have a baby. “It’s the one thing she wanted more than anything else,” says her ex-friend, Sandra Bernhard. “I think she would do anything to have one.” It’s true that anyone who knew Madonna knew that once her mind was set on a goal, it was unlikely that she wouldn’t find a way to achieve it.
It would be her darkly attractive, handsome new boyfriend, the six foot tall Carlos Leon, who would assist Madonna in achieving her goal of motherhood. Madonna met Carlos in September 1994, while jogging in Central Park. As he cycled through the park, she watched intently, impressed by his well-toned body and the way his sinewy arms and legs filled out tight black spandex. After asking her bodyguard to stay at a safe distance, Madonna approached the strapping stranger with finely chiseled Latin features. She asked him to join her for a cappuccino at a local coffeehouse. Over coffee, Madonna learned that the New York – born Cuban-American was raised in Manhattan and educated in parochial schools. He had aspired to one day become a professional cyclist, with aspirations of winning such races as the Tour de France. However, in order to earn a living, he was now a personal fitness trainer who received $100 an hour for his work, mostly at the gym Crunch. Still, he dreamed of one day making the Olympic cycling team.
Impressed by his seductive looks and contagious personality, Madonna asked Carlos to stay in touch. Of course, what is probably most amazing about the story of how the internationally known superstar performer met the anonymous fitness trainer is that, at this stage of her life and career, Madonna would actually pick up a stranger in Central Park. One can only imagine the practically unbelievable story Carlos Leon had for his buddies over drinks that evening. Shortly thereafter, they began dating.
Sometimes referred to in press reports as a “New York dancer,” the amiable Carlos was soon seen holding the happy and animated Madonna’s hand at functions in New York, Miami and Los Angeles. “We plan to start a family,” Madonna suddenly announced at her thirty-seventh birthday party, “but we’re waiting until I finish making Evita.” Of course, this proclamation of hopeful motherhood made little sense to interested observers, who couldn’t figure out exactly who Carlos Leon was, or his purpose in Madonna’s life. (“That’s the difference between me and Madonna,” her friend Rosie O’Donnell said. “She sleeps with her trainer . . . I ignore mine.”) It also made little sense to her friends who knew that she had recently asked Sean Penn to be the father of her child. However, as one friend of hers put it, “trying to make perfect sense of Madonna’s life is a lot l
ike trying to make perfect sense of electricity.”
It seemed that she felt she was unable to have a fulfilling relationship with a man at this time in her life, and simply didn’t want to wait to find one before she had a child. Madonna is an impatient woman, as anyone who knows her will admit. After Tony Ward, she had raised the stakes when it came to the kind of man she would allow in her life. So far, no one had measured up. However, it was now time for her to have a child . . . the ideal relationship would have to wait.
During Carlos’s visits to Buenos Aires, he and Madonna seldom slept in the same bedroom, causing speculation among the cast and crew about the state of their relationship. What was not known at the time, though, was that Madonna had been suffering from nightmares ever since she began the movie. “I was constantly being chased, caught and mauled in these awful nightmares,” she later confided to a friend. “Every night, I would have these dreams. I would wake up exhausted.” Madonna slept in the master bedroom of her suite, while Carlos slept in a guest room. (Often, the two would start the night in the same room, before Carlos then withdrew to the smaller one.)
After experiencing the joy of hearing her baby’s heartbeat, Madonna became concerned about the future of the movie, only adding to her stress. What would happen to Evita now? Her doctor had informed her that she was approximately ten weeks pregnant. She estimated that she could hide her condition for, perhaps, another seven weeks. However, a number of major dance numbers had been scheduled for the end of the shooting. “Of course they could always get a body double for all my dance sequences [like Jennifer Beals in Flash-dance],” Madonna mused, “but the idea of someone else doing my dancing is repulsive.”
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