Madonna Says Custody Battle Over Son Rocco Left Her “Sobbing” Every Night

Madonna is opening up about the custody fight over her son Rocco with ex-husband Guy Ritchie. On Jay Shetty’s On Purpose podcast, the 67-year-old singer revealed how broken she felt while fighting to keep her then-teen son close. 

“Probably one of the most painful moments in my life where I honestly couldn’t see the forest through the trees was when I went through a custody battle with my son,” Madonna told Shetty.

She admitted she cried every night during that time. “And even though my marriage didn’t work out, I mean, a lot of people’s marriages don’t work out. They marry the wrong people, they’re not aligned, they’re not meant for each other. Someone trying to take my child away from me was like…they might as well just kill me. That’s really how I was thinking.”

The battle played out while Madonna was on her Rebel Heart Tour, forcing her to perform through heartbreak. “I had to go on stage every night. I would just be lying on the floor of my dressing room, sobbing. I really thought it was the end of the world. I couldn’t take it,” she recalled.

The fight began in December 2015 when Rocco, then 15, decided to stop traveling with his mother and stay with his dad in London. Though a judge initially ordered that Guy return Rocco to New York, the teen stayed in England. By March 2016, a New York judge ruled that Rocco could live in the U.K. and urged both parents to reach a settlement, which they finally did in June that year.

Madonna and Guy were married from 2000 to 2008. Today, Rocco is 25, and the pop legend is mom to five other children: 28-year-old Lourdes, 20-year-old David, 19-year-old Mercy and 13-year-old twins Stella and Estere.

Looking back, Madonna says that period nearly broke her, but it also showed her resilience. The superstar who has faced countless reinventions in her career admits this was the one battle that left her sobbing on the floor, yet still finding the strength to walk out on stage.