Madonna told Interview Magazine she has no cartilage left in one of her knees, the toll, she says, of a career spent dancing in high heels, running on pavement, and practicing Ashtanga yoga. The 67-year-old pop artist also revealed that her long-gestating biopic fell apart after a budget dispute with Universal Pictures, and that a follow-up attempt to develop the project as a Netflix series went nowhere.
The disclosures, published June 22 in a USA TODAY report drawn from the Interview Magazine profile, paint a picture of a performer still driven to create, but running into the hard limits that time and the entertainment business impose on everyone, even icons.
Madonna's knee problems are not new. She cancelled multiple concerts during her 2019 Madame X Tour because of what was described as overwhelming knee pain. By the time she launched the Celebration Tour in 2023, her knee was visibly encased in a sleeve during performances.
Now, she says, the damage is permanent.
"I have a bad knee now. I have no cartilage in it."
She attributed the condition to "dancing for so long in high heels and running on pavement and doing Ashtanga yoga." Until about a year before the interview, she said, she was still jumping on trampolines and doing dance cardio, activities a doctor would call "loading on my joints." Those days are over.
Her current routine, she said, consists of Peloton bikes, the Versa Climber, high-intensity circuit training, outdoor cycling, and dancing. Not the trampolines. Not the joint-loading work. The body dictated the terms.
There is something worth noting in that list. At 67, after a career that has spanned more than four decades, Madonna is still working out harder than most people half her age. Say what you will about the spectacle, the woman puts in the hours. The entertainment industry has a way of chewing performers up and leaving wreckage behind. Madonna's version of that wreckage is a knee with no cartilage and a workout regimen that had to be rebuilt from scratch.
The knee story, though, is only half the interview. The other half is a Hollywood cautionary tale, one that says more about the studio system than it does about Madonna.
She told Interview Magazine that she spent two years developing a biopic script with Universal Pictures. The project fell apart over money. Madonna said she needed a large budget to capture the scope of her life, and Universal balked.
"We had a falling out, me and Universal, regarding budget because I needed, I've had an extraordinary life. I've had a huge life, so I needed a big budget."
She said she found a way to make the film for less money by shooting in Serbia. Universal, she claimed, was not interested. She recounted the studio's alleged response: "We don't believe you'd stay in Serbia more than four days." That quote is Madonna's characterization; USA TODAY noted it reached out to Universal Pictures for comment but reported no response.
Madonna's retort, as she told it: "Did you read the script? My whole life has been survival. I'm not going there for a holiday."
The exchange, if accurate, reveals a familiar dynamic. Studios greenlight enormous budgets for franchise sequels and intellectual property they already control. But when a performer wants to tell her own story on her own terms, the money gets tight and the faith evaporates. The entertainment industry's priorities are not exactly a secret, its power dynamics and institutional failures have been on full display for years.
After the Universal deal collapsed, Netflix approached Madonna about developing the biopic as a series. That process consumed more than eight months. Madonna said she could not find writers or a producer to make it work, and the project stalled again.
There was an additional complication: the script. Madonna said she co-wrote the screenplay during her two years with Universal, but Universal retained ownership. To use it elsewhere, she would have had to buy it back.
"That was a whole other long process, because I couldn't use the script I had with Universal unless I bought it from them for an extortionist's price, even though I wrote it."
She added, flatly: "Don't ask. That's just the way it goes."
That outcome, a creator losing control of her own work product to a corporate entity, is not unique to Madonna. It is the standard operating procedure of an industry that talks endlessly about empowering artists while locking their material behind contractual walls. The specifics of the price Universal allegedly demanded are not public. But Madonna's characterization was blunt enough.
With the biopic shelved and the Netflix series dead, Madonna said she returned to what she knows. She is promoting her 15th album, "Confessions on a Dance Floor: Part II," and in early June 2026 she premiered a short film called "Confessions II" at the Tribeca Festival. The film runs six songs and thirteen minutes and features cameos from Sabrina Carpenter, Julia Garner, Gwendoline Christie, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Madonna's daughter Lourdes "Lola" Leon.
Her explanation for the pivot back to music was characteristically direct. She said she told herself: "Good thing I have another job because I need to work, I need to create. I need to do what I was put on this earth to do."
Madonna has always been a performer who treated her career like a contact sport. She is not the only one who has paid a physical price for it. Andy Lewis, the extreme athlete who performed with Madonna at the 2012 Super Bowl halftime show, died in a BASE jumping accident in Utah, a reminder that the people who push their bodies hardest often absorb the worst consequences.
Several details are still missing from the public record. Madonna did not say which knee lost its cartilage. She did not disclose the specific budget she requested from Universal, or the price the studio wanted for the script. Universal has not commented publicly. The precise timeline of the Netflix negotiations, when they started, when they ended, and what specifically went wrong beyond the writer and producer search, remains unclear.
The celebrity world is full of people whose public narratives and private realities diverge sharply. Some turn personal upheaval into a brand. Madonna's approach is different. She told her story in a magazine interview and moved on to the next project. Whether the biopic ever gets made is an open question. Whether anyone at Universal feels any obligation to let her tell her own life story on reasonable terms is another.
At 67, with a destroyed knee and a shelved film, Madonna is still making music, still premiering work at major festivals, and still outworking the industry that can't quite figure out what to do with her. Hollywood's loss. The woman has another job.
