Celebrity

‘I am sobbing, every time’: Cher’s pain over memories of late husband Sonny

Apr 16, 2019

Cher opened up on her pain over remembering her marriage with Sonny. Source: Twitter/Today (left) and Getty (right).

Cher has opened up on the pain she feels every time she recalls parts of her marriage to late husband Sonny Bono, admitting creating her new musical The Cher Show – about her early life and career – brought some of the most difficult memories flooding back.

Speaking on the US Today show, the singer, 72, even admitted she’s regularly left “sobbing” during some scenes.

The show focuses on the musician’s rise to fame, including her turbulent relationship and subsequent marriage to her former husband as they launched a huge career together as a duo. While she doesn’t appear in the show herself, Cher helped in the writing and production from word go.

When asked what Sonny would think of the musical, the singer insisted he “would like it” – despite parts painting him in a bad light. She added: “He would be p***ed off a little bit, but he knows it’s true, so he would be okay.”

There were certain parts of producing the show, and then watching it back, that made Cher particularly emotional and she said on the program: “There were parts that were really hard and parts that were really painful. Like when Sonny is dead and he comes to talk to me. Oh, I am sobbing. Every time.”

.@cher’s back on tour and has a Broadway show all about her life. @jennabushhager caught up with her at the theatre where they’re staging @TheCherShow! pic.twitter.com/ZPyiGA8wbg

— TODAY (@TODAYshow) April 15, 2019

The singer added: “It validates him so much because we go through some stuff that really happened but it doesn’t paint him in the best light. He was so crazy, he was so funny.”

The couple first met when Cher was 16 years old and Sonny was 27, before marrying in 1964. They went on to have a child together, Chaz Bono, before divorcing in 1975.

During their high profile marriage, the pair even starred in their own TV show, The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, but following their divorce Cher has claimed they were experiencing marital problems for some time.

Speaking to Parade Magazine in 2010, Cher alleged that Sonny was a “womaniser”, adding that “one woman, or even five, was not enough for him. I found all this out afterward. I asked him, ‘How did you manage the logistics?’ I was trusting and faithful with him. The truth is, I’m not so sure we should’ve ever been husband and wife”.

She even went on to claim that the down times during the marriage made her consider suicide.

Elsewhere in her chat with Today, the ‘I Got You Babe’ singer said there have been several moments in her life when she’s thought her career was over.

“I have gone up so high and then fallen down so low. You just think, well, I would do something else but I don’t know how to do anything else.,” she told the program’s reporter.

Sonny died in 1998 following a tragic skiing accident. Cher remained in touch with him throughout their lives, and even spoke at his funeral to deliver the moving eulogy.

Asked what she hopes people take away from the show, which premiered in Chicago in June 2018 and opened on Broadway in December 2018, Cher said: “I hope that they take [away] to never give up. To have a great time, to try to enjoy your life, and to never give up.”

She added: “But, you know, I’m not a tough woman, truthfully. I’m a strong woman. I am one of us.”