This week on the Awards Tour podcast, Rotten Tomatoes Awards Editor Jacqueline Coley sits down with U2 frontman and rock legend Bono to discuss the film version of his one-man show, Bono: Stories of Surrender, now streaming on Apple TV+. Bono trades the grand spectacle of U2 concerts for a minimalist stage in this intimate documentary with just four chairs and raw, personal storytelling.
He reflects on his childhood, his father’s deep love for music, and the heartbreaking loss of his mother, offering fans an unfiltered glimpse into his life. Tune in as Bono opens up about shedding the rockstar persona to connect with audiences in a whole new way, and we’ll see you at the next stop of the Awards Tour.
Jacqueline Coley for Rotten Tomatoes: What made you want to take that very intimate one-man show and now share it with a much bigger audience than it was? When you first did it, it was just you on stage with just that audience?
Bono: Mission creep and Apple(TV+) offered to pay for it. And this was incredible because I thought, oh, this can’t be. How difficult can it be? I’m doing this night after night, I get to show all the different personalities, my sort of multiple personality disorder, and now I can capture it. And I went, ‘Oh, well, that’d be okay. It shouldn’t be too difficult.’ (laughs) But enter the world of cinema that you are so familiar with. It’s a different art form, it’s a different format. And now we have to figure out a different way of getting to your intimacy when people are a yard away.
Bono: Stories of Surrender is streaming now on AppleTV+