Madonna: 'I won't rule out rainbow family'

Madonna said last night she would not rule out taking care of more children from other countries after her controversial adoption of an African baby.

In her first interview for British television, the pop star also attacked claims that she was given special treatment over her adoption of 13-month-old David Banda from Malawi.

She was asked by Kirsty Wark on BBC2’s Newsnight whether she would consider having a “rainbow family” such as that of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

Madonna said: “I wouldn’t rule it out. I would like it to be less complicated in the future.

“But I would like to experience David for a while and see how it works out.”

The 48-year-old singer said she and husband Guy Ritchie had been through 10 months of checks and assessment by a social worker before David was allowed to live with them.

“I can assure you that I wasn’t given any special treatment,” she said.

“It’s interesting that when you want to adopt a child you have to go through all of these tests but when you want to have a child no one asks or expects anything of you.

“So I thought that was an interesting irony.”

Asked whether the adoption process coupled with the intense media scrutiny had been distressing, Madonna replied: “Absolutely”.

She strenuously denied newspaper reports that David was visited regularly by his father and his grandmother at the orphanage.

“If someone had said to me, ‘His dad comes every week or his granny visits on a regular basis and he’s well looked after’, I would not even have given it another thought,” she said.

“According to the reverend who ran the orphanage that David came from, his father never visited him. His father lived 50 or 60km away, had no car, had no money and, as far as I was told, had remarried and moved on with his life.”

When Madonna first saw David, he was in an appalling physical state with “the most horrendous diaper rash I’ve ever seen”, she said.

David is currently at the star’s London home after she was granted a temporary custody order – which makes her a “foster parent”, she says.

Madonna said she and Ritchie began talking about adoption two years ago and the film director visited Malawi in April after they had made their decision.

Asked by Wark if she was used to being in control of a situation, she replied: “I would like to make a correction. I’m not used to being in control, I think that’s a preconceived notion that people have, that I’m in control of everything.

“What happened with the adoption and the world’s reaction to it was quite shocking and there’s no way I could have prepared myself for it.”

In a separate interview with NBC’s Today show in the US, the star branded critics of the adoption as “racist” because the boy was black.

“I think it’s still considered taboo,” she said.

“A lot of people have a problem with the fact that I’ve adopted an African child, a child who has a different colour skin than I do.”

Madonna also confirmed that David was wearing a red Kabbalah string bracelet on his wrist, saying he would study the faith.

:: During the Newsnight interview, Madonna revealed her US political colours. Asked who should be the next leader, she replied: “I wouldn’t mind if Hillary Clinton was president.”