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How Anderson Cooper REALLY Felt About Getting Spanked On-Stage By Madonna

How Anderson Cooper REALLY Felt About Getting Spanked On-Stage By Madonna

(L) Andeson Cooper and (R) Anderson Cooper dancing on stage with Madonna
Tinseltown/Shutterstock; YouTube

There was also faux-humping and a banana involved?!

Silver fox Anderson Cooper recently opened up about how he’s tried “to forget” about the time he was “humped” by the Queen of Pop.

The CNN anchor told his longtime friend Kelly Ripa the story on the newest episode of her podcast Let’s Talk Off Camera where he admitted to being “mortified” about the experience.

The pair were reminiscing about past Madonna concert experiences they’ve had together when Ripa brought up seeing the “Like a Virgin” singer on tour in 2015 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

“Do you remember the time you were plucked out of the stage in Brooklyn?” Ripa asked.

“Oh god. That I chose to forget,” Cooper replied. “I loved the whole idea of it, loved the experience of it, I don’t love the video that exists of it.”

To the 54-year-old’s horror, the experience was captured on video and uploaded to YouTube where it has been viewed more than 150,000 times.

“I didn’t know what the hell was going on,” Cooper said. “I was terrible. I danced terribly. It was mortifying.”


During Madonna’s Rebel Hearts Tour she would invite an audience member on stage during her performance of “Unapologetic Bitch” where she would faux hump and spank them before gifting them a banana.

“And right before that she pushed me over and humped me. Which I didn’t expect at all,” he recalled. "So I open it up and I start to peel it and eat it. And then all of a sudden, I start lowering down on this little electronic elevator disappearing on the stage just, like, eating this banana.”

He continued, “To this day, I don’t know what happened.”


Two years later Cooper and the Material Girl were reunited on Live with Kelly and Ryan, where the two joked about the political commentator's terrible dance moves.

“I want to talk about something that you weren’t good at. I’ve danced with you at nightclubs [and] you were very free and cool,” she said. “And then when you got on stage, I was like, ‘Who is this guy?'”

Cooper defended himself, saying, “It’s one thing dancing with you at a nightclub. It’s intimate and stuff. [But] in the Barclays Center with all these people? … You didn’t just dance with me, you bent me over, you slapped me, you did something else to me and then you handed me a banana.”

Despite being “mortified,” the Emmy winner said that he was “thrilled” to “walk into the CNN newsroom” after he was “humped on a stage by Madonna.”

Then Cooper redeemed himself when Madonna asked him to dance with her again.

After suffering from a bacterial infection that caused her to be hospitalized and forced to postpone her concert dates, Madonna will begin the North American leg of her Celebration Tour on Dec. 13 in Brooklyn at the Barclay Center.

The Advocates with Sonia BaghdadyOut / Advocate Magazine - Jonathan Groff and Wayne Brady

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Ariel Messman-Rucker

Ariel Messman-Rucker is an Oakland-born journalist who now calls the Pacific Northwest her home. When she’s not writing about politics and queer pop culture, she can be found reading, hiking, or talking about horror movies with the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network.

Ariel Messman-Rucker is an Oakland-born journalist who now calls the Pacific Northwest her home. When she’s not writing about politics and queer pop culture, she can be found reading, hiking, or talking about horror movies with the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network.