Bet You Didn’t Know: Secrets Behind the Making of “What’s Love Got to Do With It”

Why didn’t Ike ever sue Disney/Touchstone for their portrayal of him?

A lot of folk assumed Ike didn’t have an issue with the way he came across in this movie because he never sued the movie makers for their monstrous depiction of him. That’s not exactly true. In his autobiography, Takin’ Back My Name, he states that the movie unfairly destroyed his image: “Sure I slapped Tina. There have been times when I punched her to the ground without thinking. But I never beat her.” Hmm…ok, Ike. While I will admit that some of the scenes were certainly dramatized for the movie, that fact that Ike was a drug addict, makes it hard to trust his credibility. Later in an interview with Dominick A. Miserandino, he said that he was dupped into signing a contract that eliminated his rights.

I have an attorney, man, who is going to sue Disney for it. See, what happened, back during my “druggie days,” I signed a contract with Walt Disney, giving them permission. This lawyer lied to me. I thought I was giving them permission for somebody to play me in the movie, and that I wouldn’t sue them for somebody else being Ike Turner in the movie. I didn’t care. If Tina didn’t want to do it with me, that’s okay. I didn’t find out until I got sober and clean, coming out of jail, when I was trying to find out how I was going to start back with my career. Only then did I find out that I had signed away my rights to sue them, and they could portray me any way that they wanted to.

While most of us will never know the true nature of Ike, but we do know that he was both an abusive, tyrannical husband and band leader and musical genius who changed the sound of Rock and Roll. Complicated to say the least.

What did we miss, what surprising facts do you know about this movie or the actual story of Ike and Tina Turner?

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