Simply The Best​​​​​​​ Tina Turner Returns

There was a movie about tina turner’s life 25 years ago, but 2018 is the year of her musical.

- Judy Kean

Tina Turner is a big fan of retirement. “It’s wonderful,” says the 78-year-old singer, who hung up her short, sparkly dresses and killer heels eight years ago. “You sleep long, do what you want, decorate the house two or three times – just easy things that you dreamed about when you were working and that’s all you did.”

After a career that spanned five decades, Tina deserves to put her feet up. Which is exactly what she’s been doing – enjoying a peaceful life in the Swiss home she shares with her German husband Erwin Bach.

But then a couple of years ago, Phyllida Lloyd – the theatre producer behind the hugely successful stage show Mamma Mia! – knocked on her door to ask if she could make a musical about the singer’s life.

Tina took a deep breath and raised her palm. “No, I don’t need a musical,” she said.

And who could blame her? Her life had already been adapted into the 1993 movie What’s Love Got to Do with It?, which told how she rose from poverty to become an international music legend, enduring violent treatment at the hands of her ex-husband Ike Turner along the way.

“I didn’t want to do a musical because I didn’t really understand it or agree with it,” Tina says.