'She Just Needed to Talk and Yell': Cher and 'Tired' Tina Turner 'Laughed Hysterically' Prior to Singer's Death
Oct. 16 2023, Published 11:57 a.m. ET
Cher was able to visit her pal Tina Turner before she died in May at age 83.
“I got to see her. She was lying on the chaise and said, ‘I’m tired.’ Then for two hours we were running around the house, and she was laughing hysterically,” the singer, 77, recalled in a new interview. “She just needed to talk and yell. That’s the Tina that I loved. We had the best time and talked about the old times.”
The "Believe" songstress even left a gift from Turner when she visited her Switzerland home.
“I’m not going to wear them,” Cher said of Turner's high heels. “I just have them up in my closet.”
Cher previously revealed some of their last moments together during an interview with MSNBC, sharing that Turner was "really happy" despite being "really sick."
"I started going to visit her because I thought, 'I need to put this time into our friendship, so she knows we haven't forgotten her,'" she said. "So we all took turns going and spending time with her and it made her happy."
"[Turner] said, 'I can't spend too much time,'" Cher continued. "Then five hours later we were laughing like crazy … She was having a good time in spite of the fact that she was really sick and not wanting people to know about it."
As OK! previously reported, Turner's good friend Eddy Hampton Armani said she "knew her days were coming."
"When I was told Tina died, I froze. I did not shed a tear. I haven't let it sink in because I was in denial. I screamed in the most horrendous voice, 'No, no, no, no!'" he shared. "She's not here, but to me, she still is. I know when it finally hits me, it will hurt like a ton of bricks."
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Turner had health problems over the years — she suffered from a stroke and got a kidney transplant.
Before she got a new kidney, she toyed with assisted suicide.
"It wasn’t my idea of life but the toxins in my body had started taking over. I couldn’t eat," she wrote in her 2018 memoir. "I was surviving, but not living. I began to think about death. If my kidneys were going, and it was time for me to die, I could accept that, it was OK. When it’s time, it’s really time."
Fortunately, her husband Erwin Bach donated the organ, but she still experienced "ups and downs," as from "time to time my body tried to reject the donor kidney as it frequently happens after a transplantation," she said.
Turner eventually died of natural causes at her home in Switzerland.
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People spoke with Cher.