Lucille Ball Dropped the F-Bomb When She Gave Divorce Advice to Cher

You can’t say Cher didn’t warn Hoda Kotb this morning on The Today Show. Cher was there to promote her new memoir, and Kotb asked Cher about advice she’d received from comedy icon Lucille Ball after her 1975 divorce from Sonny Bono. “I can’t say it on TV,” Cher insisted, asking if the show’s producers could bleep out the offending words. 

Don’t worry, said Kotb. “We’ll bleep it!”

Given the green light, Cher talked about reaching out to her longtime pal. The wacky redhead knew all about public divorces, shocking the world when she broke it off with Desi Arnaz after I Love Lucy ended. “I said, ‘Lucy, I’m calling you because, to my knowledge, there’s never been a situation besides mine except yours,’” Cher said. 

Ball’s sage advice about how to handle the situation? “Fuck him,” she said. “You’re the one with the talent.”

Cue Kotb freaking the eff out. Despite insisting that the show would take care of Cher’s language indiscretions, Lucy’s F-bomb via Cher went out live to Today’s morning viewers. “Well, you said I could!” protested Cher.

“I should have bleeped it myself,” Kotb said. “Bleep!” (Note that NBC retroactively added the bleep in the online clip above, even blurring Cher’s lips so that impressionable youngsters won’t be able to make out the F and K enunciations.)

Here’s what’s even more obscene than Lucy’s no-nonsense advice: Cher reminding Kotb and America that when she and Sonny got together, he was 27 years old. She was sixteen. Yikes — no wonder there was such an uncomfortable power dynamic. When the two split, Cher got nothing but her clothes and a car. “He took it all,” she said. “He took it all.” 

What went wrong? “I was not an employee, that’s for sure, but I didn’t have any freedom,” she explained. “We had a company that I didn’t even know was a company. It was called Cher Enterprises. It was very Born Yesterday. I’m signing everything, and I have no idea what I’m signing.”

Given the troubles that led to the split, it’s baffling why Cher continued to perform with Sonny after the divorce. Even she seems bewildered as to why that happened. “It’s crazy,” she admitted, especially given the inequity of their settlement. What made Bono believe it was his right to take all the earnings from a company called Cher Enterprises? That’s what Cher wanted to know. 

“Did he ever have an answer as to why he did it?” asked Kotb.

Nope. “I don’t think he wanted to go there,” said Cher. “Because how do you answer that?”

Something tells me Ball would have had an effing answer for Bono.