Cher and Tina Turner were close friends for many years. Following the death of Turner this week, Cher opened up about visiting Turner toward the end of her life.
Cher called into the MSNBC show The Beat with Ari Melber to pay tribute to her late friend. According to ET, she said, “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.’ So we all took turns going and spending time with her and it made her happy.”
While Cher didn’t detail who the “we” was that took turns visiting Turner, she mentioned Turnder had a dialysis machine in her Switzerland home and that she fought hard against her illness. (Turner had unmanaged high blood pressure for years that eventually led to kidney damage. She underwent kidney transplant surgery in 2017 after husband, Erwin Bach, donated a kidney to her.) Cher also mentioned that at one point, Turner told her she was “ready” to die but still maintained her happiness in spite of being sick.
During her final visit, Turner gave Cher a pair of her shoes which she referred to as, “The big high heels that she just [walked] around in like they were nothing.”
Turner’s death at age 83 has been attributed to natural causes, according to U.K’s Daily Mail.