Madonna on Fall: "I Didn't Hurt My Butt, I Hurt My Head"

“I didn’t hurt my butt, I hurt my head. I did,” Madonna says to Ross. “I know how to fall, I’ve fallen off my horse many times and I tucked and I have good core strength… but the thing is, I had a little bit of a whiplash and I smacked the back of my head so there was a man standing over me with a flashlight until about 3 a.m. making sure that I was still compos mentis.”

Madge also explained how the fall happened:

“I’m a creature of habit, I rehearse everything – everything, everything, everything – and I was thrown a wrench at the very beginning of my entrance. I was told to tie my cape and start much further back than we had rehearsed, so because I had to walk so much further, everybody was worried that my cape was going to slide off because it’s quite heavy so they tied it really tight around my neck.”

So here I am marching in like a queen, and I got to the top of the stairs, and I pulled my silky string and it would not come undone. My two lovely Japanese dancers basically strangled me off the stage. I had a choice, I could either be strangled or fall with the cape and I fell.”

But ultimately Madonna is a professional (as evidenced by post-fall recovery), and her biggest disappointment: “It was a horrible nightmare because I like to be amazing.”