Family Ties: Madonna's final warning to brother before tell-all memoir
By Georgia Weir|
Family feuds can affect all types of families, both large and small. In fact, one of the world's biggest pop stars has had her share of familial woes.
Madonna and her brother Christopher Ciccone were famously close, however when Ciccone released a tell-all book on his famous sister, the pair's relationship spiralled into an all-out feud.
Born to Italian and French-Canadian immigrant parents, they were two of eight children. When Madonna's star began to rise, she took Ciccone along with her.
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Ciccone initially began as his sister's personal assistant and eventually became her concert and tour director. He also worked behind the scenes of 1991 documentary Madonna: Truth or Dare.
The Like A Virgin singer's brother would continue to work closely with the superstar until 2001 when drama began to brew. Ciccone found out Madonna had not hired him to assist her with her Drowned World Tour.
In a later interview with The Guardian, Ciccone said: "From the moment I found out that I wasn't doing Drowned World, to her and Guy's wedding, everything became a bit of a blur, a dark, fairly negative period of time for me."
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Madonna's marriage to Guy Ritchie and Ciccone's exclusion from the upcoming tour seemed to strain the pair's once-close relationship.
However, according to Ciccone, it was when the Into the Groove singer accused him of theft that cemented bad blood between the siblings.
"It took the final email accusing me of stealing from her, of swindling her after 20 years of being the only person that hadn't," Ciccone would recount to the Irish Times.
Reeling from the accusations, in 2008 Ciccone began secretly working with Wendy Leigh, who had also worked on biographies of John F. Kennedy Jr, Prince Edward, and Liza Minnelli. Together, the pair would write and release a tell-all memoir, My Life with My Sister Madonna.
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Madonna had apparently caught wind of the memoir when her father informed her that Ciccone had requested previously unseen family photographs. At this point, Madonna began furiously exchanging emails with the end of her final email reportedly reading, "You'll both be sorry."
In the scathing memoir, Ciccone made a number of claims about his sister. He described Madonna as machiavellian, dominating, a tyrant, selfish, bossy and mean. He also accused her of outing him on live television and blamed Guy Ritchie's 'homophobia' on the siblings' strained relationship.?
In response to that allegation, Ritchie said to Cosmopolitan, "I don't make anything of the book. The poor chap wrote it out of desperation. I don't think it'd be intelligent to comment on that. I can't give too much equity in what the chap's gonna write in that book. But you'd be hard pushed to be a homophobe and marry Madonna."
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Ciccone also took aim at Madonna for filming their mother's grave for her 1991 documentary, Truth or Dare: Madonna.
"At one point, if you've seen the Truth or Dare movie, when she's rolling around on my mother's grave, that was a turning point for me in my relationship with her," Ciccone told ABC News.
He also claimed Madonna refused to financially aid her blind 97-year-old grandmother.
"It's difficult to trust people, you know, but someone like my grandmother, you know, you just do it," he said. "I wanted her to look after her, to get her a driver and a car.
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"It seems like the easiest thing to do," he added.
"Ultimately, so she, she gave her $500 a month and pays, and pays for her medical bills."
Years later, Ciccone would also call Madonna "horrific" and further claim she blacklisted him in Hollywood during a Page Six interview.
The siblings have since managed to patch up their relationship จC at least for their family's sake.
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