Pop legend Madonna talks to New York magazine about the connection between her early involvement in the fight against AIDS among gay men in the US and her current engagement fighting for AIDS orphans in Malawi.

NY Mag: You were one of the first pop stars to talk about the AIDS crisis. But I've never heard you discuss any connection between that and your work in Malawi. Is there one?
Madonna: There are a lot. One is that I myself feel like a motherless child. I grew up that way. But also the idea that I felt so helpless by the AIDS epidemic that seemed to sweep through Manhattan and claim the lives of so many people that I loved. And I saw how stigmatized the gay community was, and that freaked me out.

Madonna has produced and narrated the documentary I Am Because We Are, about Malawi and its AIDS orphans, which premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival.

NY Mag: The documentary catches your son David on film before you tried to adopt him. What was that first meeting like?
Madonna: He was basically going to the bathroom on himself. Of course, next day you come back with a truckload of Pampers. It sounds corny, but he just has these big, bright, intelligent, so-aware eyes, and I felt a connection to him.

NY Mag: The legal ground for the adoption was a little murky, setting off controversy [a court is set to review the matter this week]. Meanwhile, a British professor has coined the term "Madonna effect" to describe Westerners who do international adoptions, supposedly at the expense of local kids.
Madonna: Cool. That's a grumpy person. You know, there isn't an AIDS crisis in England. Yes, there are children that need to be adopted here and in the U.K., but no one's going to die in an orphanage in America.

NY Mag: There's also been some controversy over links between the Kabbalah Centre and your aid group, Raising Malawi. Could you clarify that connection?
Madonna: Studying Kabbalah has inspired me to understand that the world does not revolve around me. Who knows if I would have become involved [otherwise]? But Raising Malawi is a separate entity utterly consumed with children in sub-Saharan Africa.

NY Mag: Tom Cruise was at a recent fund-raiser. Do you sympathize with him?
Madonna: I do. I don't care if people worship turtles or frogs—if they're good people, that's all I care about, and he is a good person. I think he gets a raw deal, just as I think the orphans in Malawi get a raw deal, just as I think a lot of marginalized people get a raw deal.

Last update: 04-22-2008 14:23