Tina Turner Wished Ike Turner Could Have Seen ‘Tina: The Musical’ for 1 Reason
Tina Turner’s life has now been the subject of books, movies, and a stage musical. What’s Love Got to Do With It? was a straight adaptation of Turner’s book, I, Tina. The film included Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne performing as Ike and Tina Turner. Tina: The Tina Turner Musical uses Turner’s own songs throughout her biographical story.
Revisiting her life and hardships for a third time, the singer said she wished her late ex-husband Ike could have seen it. In a 2018 interview with Oprah Winfrey for Super Soul, the singer explained what she hoped Tina would have meant to Ike.
Tina Turner wasn’t eager to make ‘Tina’
Turner retired in 2009 after a long, successful, and acclaimed career. She had no more performing to do. Plus, she’d already relived her traumatic marriage to Ike twice for the book and the movie.
“I was reluctant because I was retired, I didn’t want to remember, I didn’t want to talk about it because I knew that I would have bad dreams,” Turner told Winfrey. “To talk about it, it’s not a good feeling to remember. And there was so much more in the back of the mind that happened, it all comes forward when you start remembering. I didn’t want to get involved with that.”
What convinced Tina Turner to participate in ‘Tina’
The producers of the musical wanted Turner’s participation. Joop van den Ende convinced her.
“Then the Joop company, the van den Ende Company all came to my house to talk me into it,” she said. “I said no until the very end and then Mr. van den Ende said, ‘No, it has to be this.’ He explained to me what a musical was, what has to be the message of it and that mine was true, true story and one that should be a musical. Then I thought yeah, there’s no one else to tell them the story because everyone is gone. Then I got involved with it and now I feel proud of it.”
What she hopes Ike Turner would have thought of the musical
I, Tina, What’s Love Got to Do With It? and Tina all include scenes of Tina’s marriage to Ike. All three address the abuse Tina says she endured from Ike. However, she hopes if he had lived to see the musical, Ike would have seen her persevere.
“I said, ‘Oh, I wish my mother and my sister and Ike could see it,’” she said. “It was a moment where they should have been able to see what I did with all of that bad stuff that was done to me.”
Ike Turner, sister Aillene Bullock and mother Zelma Currie were no longer alive, but Turner felt supported all over again by the Tina: The Musical premiere audience.
“I felt proud the night of the opening when I walked into the room and everyone stood,” she said. “It was a very nice respect. And then when it all started, my whole body chilled. I thought, ‘This is wonderful.’”
Source: Super Soul
