Cher

Cher is a recurring presence in Andy Warhol’s diaries as both a celebrity subject and a sharply observed participant in his social world. Her appearances expose the work behind stardom: interviews that test the boundary between public answers and private disclosure, a portrait opportunity born from a chance encounter, and press attention that could turn an ordinary detail into an unwanted story.

The interview and the image

In August 1978, Warhol and his companions interviewed Cher at The Plaza Hotel for Interview. The conversation was constrained by the need to keep her answers suitable for her young fans. She offered stock responses about being an idol, and Warhol and the others wondered whether the dark circles under her eyes hinted at a private life she was not discussing. The interview’s polished surface shifted when Cher walked through the hotel lobby amid screaming fans: Warhol observed that she seemed different in their presence, and different again when she entered her limousine. His account registers celebrity not as a fixed quality but as a performance that changes with its audience.

The contrast continued during a later photo session with Barry McKinley. Warhol described Cher as transforming in front of the camera, appearing to fall in love with her own image. McKinley’s deliberately abrasive directions, which Warhol recorded, made the shoot a conspicuous performance in its own right. Cher’s public image was not simply captured; it was produced through the photographer’s prompts and her response to them.

Interview offered a route into this world of carefully mediated visibility. By 1976, the magazine’s glamorous, self-mocking style had made celebrities eager to appear in it, and Warhol frequently conducted cover interviews himself. He described the promise of magazine exposure as replacing the earlier promise of a role in one of his films. In 1981, a chance visit to a Maud Frizon shoe store brought that magazine-and-image economy into direct focus: Warhol and Jon Gould found the shop because a crowd had gathered to watch Cher trying on shoes. Sonny Bono was there with Susie Coelho, while other customers and shoppers’ stories made expensive clothes and shoes part of the spectacle around celebrity.

As Warhol and Jon were leaving, a store employee relayed that Cher would be honored if Warhol made her portrait. Jon urged him not to let the offer pass, and Warhol went back inside to speak with her. The encounter led to a portrait invitation, though the diary does not establish that a portrait was completed. Warhol’s usual commissioned-portrait process helps explain the significance of the prospect: he typically began by taking about sixty Polaroids, selected a handful for screen-printed transparencies, and adjusted the chosen image before it was transferred to canvas. In his studio, a celebrity likeness was shaped through repeated selection and retouching, not merely recorded from life.

Candid disclosures and career hopes

In March 1982, Warhol interviewed Cher at the Mayflower Hotel, in a penthouse overlooking Central Park. She was ill: for four days she had been unable to eat or even swallow a vitamin pill, and medication for her throat had made her face break out and swell. She was drinking thick, rich malteds to keep her weight from falling too much. The setting was glamorous, but the details she shared were bodily and immediate, a marked contrast with the fan-safe stock answers Warhol had observed at The Plaza Hotel.

Cher spoke freely about her romantic life, saying that she had acquired two boyfriends in one week and was happy because they were real men. When Warhol raised the rumor that she had been seeing Ron Duguay, she confirmed it but said he was too interested in himself and was not right for her. She would discuss almost anything, Warhol noted, except her father; that subject was a firm refusal. Her candor therefore had limits of her own choosing, rather than simply conforming to the expectations of an interview.

She also described her response to being cast as the second lead, after Meryl Streep, in the Karen Silkwood story. Cher said she had cried for five hours when she received the news, explaining that she had considered her earlier work unsuccessful except for the play Come Back to the Five and Dime. The outpouring registered the casting as more than another credit: in her account, it answered a deep dissatisfaction with the work she had done before and gave her a reason for happiness.

Social encounters and the pressure of publicity

In a later account of a barbecue at Cher’s home, access began with an unusual invitation: a recording on her private telephone number automatically invited callers to the gathering. Warhol’s party arrived and was let inside, although he could see that Cher and her boyfriend were surprised to find them there. Cher served pork and beans and eventually disclosed the simple secret of the dish: canned soup with plenty of hot sauce. The scene placed her among friends and visitors rather than before an interviewer's questions, with everyday hosting and comic mishaps taking the place of a formal celebrity appearance.

At the same gathering, Elijah, described as a little Allman boy, went around cutting buds from flowers just before they opened. Cher told a story about a crane that had stayed for two days and eaten all the fish; later, at Lisa Love’s home, the same sort of visitor appeared in a matching anecdote about a crane eating fish. The repeated story gave the day a small comic echo, while Cher’s recollection of Madonna asking how to cut a wedding cake—and then handing pieces to guests—connected the gathering to the improvised manners of celebrity life.

Publicity intruded more sharply through a copy of Star at the barbecue. Its story upset Cher by claiming that she never bathed and announcing that the following week would feature her meeting with Jackie Kennedy. The visitors did not ask whether that meeting had taken place. Cher instead recalled meeting Warhol at an airport around 1965, during one of his first tours, when she was with Sonny. The contrast between that early encounter and the later magazine story frames her celebrity across time: personal memories endured, while a sensational claim could seize control of how the public saw her.

A presence beyond the interview

Cher’s influence also appeared indirectly at Chastity Bono’s birthday party in 1986. Cher did not attend because she and Chastity had quarrelled. Warhol described a room full of young women modeled on screen and pop-star appearances, including several who looked like Madonna. Although Cher was absent, the episode places her within a social world where famous looks were copied and circulated, and where personal conflict could determine whether a star appeared at all.

Across these diary entries, Cher moves between the carefully managed settings of the hotel interview and photo shoot, candid conversations about illness and ambition, and informal gatherings where publicity, family tensions, and celebrity anecdotes overlap. Warhol’s attention to the shifts between these settings makes her more than a name in a procession of famous guests: she is presented as someone who could play to the camera, disclose what she chose, and remain vulnerable to the stories others printed about her.