Sinead O’Connor’s Documentary Director on the Late Singer’s Courage and the Unfinished Album She Left Behind
variety.comFor all the great music she left behind, most of the public knows Sinead O’Connor for one moment: tearing up a photo of Pope John Paul II on “Saturday Night Live” in 1992, a move that was intended as a blunt statement on abuse in the Catholic church.
Not surprisingly, the move torpedoed her career and made her the object of vicious responses from the public and many celebrities — she was booed when she walked onstage at a Bob Dylan tribute concert just days after the incident — and the pillorying continued for many years, with the reaction to her statement changing only as the church’s countless, widespread abuses have become horrifyingly clear.
While O’Connor, who died on July 26 at 56, had never been comfortable with the superstardom that followed her 1990 global smash cover of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” the way she was treated was shocking at the time and, as Irish director Kathryn Ferguson’s 2022 documentary “Nothing Compares” shows, it’s exponentially more shocking now.
Ferguson, who filmed the interview with O’Connor that anchors the doc over a single weekend in 2019, spoke with Variety about the singer, her legacy, and the unfinished album she left behind. (As told to Jazz Tangcay) I’m very shocked, as we all are, and very, very sad that she’s gone.
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