Anderson Cooper recalls getting bent over and “humped” by Madonna: “It was mortifying”
Anderson Cooper is a Madonna superfan but even he has his limits.
Cooper has been good friends with Madonna for years, but he’s now revealed how one of their run-ins turned out to be too close for comfort for the CNN anchor.
On the latest episode of Kelly Ripa’s podcast Let’s Talk Off Camera, the 56-year-old reminisced with Ripa about the various times they went to see Madonna concerts together and quickly realized they remembered things slightly differently.
“What was the year we went to see her in Paris? That was so fun,” Cooper said of attending the MDMA tour in 2012, recalling how they were in the Golden Triangle mosh pit with other other hardcore Madonna fans.
But his recollection turned more dour when Ripa brought up seeing the “Vogue” singer in New York a few years later.
“Do you remember the time you were plucked out of the stage in Brooklyn?” Ripa gleefully asked in regards to seeing Madonna’s Rebel Heart tour in 2015 at the Barclays Center.
“Oh god. That I chose to forget,” Cooper said. “I loved the whole idea of it, loved the experience of it, I don’t love the video that exists of it.”
Each night on the Rebel Heart tour, Madonna would invite someone from the audience to be her “Unapologetic Bitch” and would proceed to playfully bend them over and spank them on stage, before gifting them with a banana as a parting gift. Don’t ask!
Among the celebs that took a turn being Madonna’s “bitch” throughout the tour were Ariana Grande, Katy Perry, Diplo, Idris Elba, Amy Schumer, and Cooper.
“I didn’t know what the hell was going on,” Cooper said of his awkward experience. “I was terrible. I danced terribly. It was mortifying.”
He described how the professional dancers made maneuvering on stage look “so natural and normal,” but that was not his vibe while trying to shake his thang with the Queen of Pop.
“All of a sudden you find yourself standing, like, on this thing and then she hands you a banana,” he recalled to Ripa.
“And right before that she pushed me over and humped me. Which I didn’t expect at all. So I just open up and start to peel it and eat the banana and then all of a sudden I start to lower on this little electronic elevator disappearing on the stage eating this banana…to this day I don’t know what happened.”
He finished with a plea to the general public. “Anyone listening to this please do not go and look at it online because it is just mortifying, truly mortifying.”
Sorry, Coop!
Two years later, Cooper was able to redeem himself with Madonna under slightly less nerve-racking pressure.
While appearing on a 2017 episode of Live with Kelly & Ryan, Madonna taught Cooper her signature deep squat moves and he proved his white boy dance was finally up to snuff.
Watch Cooper get into the groove with Madonna:
After being hospitalized in June and postponing the North American leg of her highly-anticipated Celebration Tour, Madonna has been sharing details of her recovery and she looks to be better than ever.
Rehearsals have allegedly re-started and the tour is now expected to launch October 14th in London.
The first US date is set for December 13th at the Barclays Center in New York, so hopefully Cooper has his ticket and dancing shoes ready to go!
