Ingrid Casares recently gave an interview with the Wham Bam Thank You Pam podcast where she shed newish light on the Madonna, Sandra Bernhard and her drama triangle in the “Sex” book era early 90s.
Matthew Rettenmund sums it up nicely on his EncyclopediaMadonnica Instagram. Cut and pasted here:
“Ingrid Casares (seen with a fur-clad Madonna in 1997) gave a recent interview about addiction, her good fortune with poppi and M to WHAM BAM THANK YOU PAM that seems to have gone under the radar.
She talks with Pam Gaslow about meeting Sandra Bernhard, saying Sandra encouraged her within one month to move in with her, relocating from Miami to L.A. in July 1991. And spoiler alert, she states directly:
"M is straight," putting to rest decades of assumptions about their relationship.
According to Ingrid, she met Madonna at her birthday one month later, August 1991.
By December, Madonna was working on "Sex" and asked Ingrid at dinner - in front of Sandra and Steven Meisel — if she would be in it. Sandra angrily told Ingrid she was not allowed to do it. Interestingly, Ingrid says Sandra would spend long phone calls with her pals Andre Leon Talley and Isaac Mizrahi TRASHING Madonna, even though they were supposedly friends. Ingrid calls herself a "loyalist," which is an understatement 34 years later.
When she started hanging out with Madonna, Sandra "freaked out." Ingrid feels it was all very high school, with Sandra telling her she couldn't hang out with Madonna anymore. Ingrid instead flew to Miami to shoot "Sex" and suffered Sandra's wrath publicly for 10+ years (as we recall, it was a major, major part of Sandra's act for a long time). Amazingly, Ingrid got to watch Madonna's nude-hitcher shoot before she posed herself!
Of being in the press 24/7 back then, she says, "It was always, 'Ingrid, Madonna's gal pal! Madonna and I have always been friends... They assumed it was more, but Madonna's straight, Madonna's straight, she doesn't like girls."
As I've often said, if Madonna were bisexual, I've always believed she would tell us.
Very eye-opening interview. I think this has to be the first time anyone point-blank asked Ingrid about whether she had sex with Madonna, and hearing Ingrid's take on being under the media microscope is fascinating.”