‘He was a pig’: Cher doesn’t hold back as she exposes the one director she ‘really, really disliked,’ accuses he was ‘not nice to the girls’

Cher is one of the most outspoken stars that has ever reigned in Hollywood, so when she announced she was working on a memoir, everyone was fully expecting her to be as frank about her many feuds in the industry as she possibly could.

But one person Cher definitely had an ax to grind with was the legendary maverick filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich, who once declared Cher the most difficult person he’s ever dealt with. Bogdanovich stopped by Vulture, which has a rather impressive run of tracking legends in entertainment at the twilight of their careers, where they’re rather willing to share with the world what they thought of everyone because, mostly, they don’t have much else left to lose.

Bogdanovich told Vulture that he didn’t get along with Cher because, in his opinion, Cher doesn’t like working with men and, in his eyes, that is why Cher even dropped her surname. Bogdanovich then also made a claim that another reason he found it difficult working with Cher is because she cannot act, and even though Cher actually won an award for their film Mask at the illustrious Cannes Film Festival, Bogdanovich takes full credit for that, saying that it was only because he shot her well. The interview was conducted in 2019, and Bogdanovich unfortunately passed away shortly after, in 2022.

Cher never truly had an opportunity to respond to him, but with the release of her memoir, the moment has finally presented itself. In an interview with The Times, Cher gave her two cents on her approach when it comes to working with directors by saying, “Ask everybody: I’m really easy to work with,” and gave examples of other directors she had a good relationship with, such as Mike Nichols and Bob Altman, whom Cher ensured to say she knew when to listen to and greatly respected. She also reminisced how Meryl Streep gave her the secret of her iconic run of classics, explaining that by being less confrontational with directors, you actually get to do more of what you think is best for a scene.

As for her working relationship with Peter Bogdanovich in particular, Cher remembers him to be an “asshole” and a “pig.” Cher stressed that she “really, really disliked him.” The two seemingly had an issue about which of the two had more control of the set, and their conflict can be best summarized by the retelling of a scene in which Bogdanovich wanted to know which approach Cher would take if it were up to her to shoot it. Cher told The Times of Bogdanovich, “He comes in and says, ‘Cher, where do you think we should film this scene?’ And I say, ‘Well, the kitchen is working pretty well, why don’t we do that again?’ The next morning he arrives on set eating an egg sandwich and starts screaming that he’s not going to let me direct this film; I’m a nobody; he can cut me out at any moment.”

Cher said that her main problem with Bogdanovich was that he was extremely arrogant and not nice to the girls, and considering right up to the tail end of his career he still believed that an actress could win an award through no merit of their own but simply because he was involved. It’s likely that he never changed one bit, right to the very end.