Bono on His Film’s Ovation at Cannes, Combative Relationship with His Father & Springsteen vs Trump
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Bono’s Stories of Surrender: Faith, Fathers, and Finding the Extraordinary in the Ordinary
On a recent night in Hollywood, a man known by only four letters—Bono—took the stage not to sing, but to tell stories. Stories of Surrender, his new one-man show adapted for Apple TV+, is a sweeping meditation on family, faith, and fame. It’s also a testament to the enduring power of humility, humor, and the search for meaning in a world that often feels too noisy for reflection.
Bono, the legendary frontman of U2, has spent decades at the center of the world’s biggest stages. Yet, as he sits down for an intimate conversation about the film’s premiere at Cannes, his complicated relationship with his father, and even Donald Trump’s recent social media jabs, he radiates the same restless searching that has always defined his music.
A Life Reimagined on Stage and Screen
Stories of Surrender began as a memoir, a deeply personal account of Bono’s journey from the north side of Dublin to global superstardom. But for Bono, the written word wasn’t enough. “I play an aging rock star on a massive ego trip,” he jokes, tongue firmly in cheek. “It’s quite a stretch.”
The film, like the show, is less a celebration of celebrity and more a confession booth. Bono is quick to puncture any balloon of self-importance, often making fun of his own grandiosity. “You constantly remind yourself of your humility,” his interviewer observes. Bono laughs. “Short, massive rock star. I do that to myself all the time.”
Why? For Bono, the answer is simple: “You can never just let it float out there, can you? You have to say something to put a little pin in that big balloon that we all enjoy.”
Faith in the Dark
One of the film’s most moving moments comes as Bono recounts his 2016 heart surgery. Lying on the operating table, he reaches out to God—and, for a moment, finds no one there. “That’s probably high on love drugs,” he jokes, but the sentiment lingers. For Bono, faith is not a certainty but a wrestling match.
“It’s a story of three fathers,” he says. “My father, Bob—Brendan Robert Hewson—and my rather complicated relationship with him. The story of me becoming a father, not wanting to screw up, and the sense that maybe I hadn’t been the best son. And, if it’s okay to talk about such subjects on late night TV, my father in heaven—and the wrestling I’m involved with there.”
Bono’s faith is not a shield from doubt, but a companion to it. “I believe these things, but I have so much and others don’t. How should I feel about that? What should I do about that?” These are the questions he asks himself, and his audience.
For Bono, music and faith are intertwined. “In rock and roll, we go to church in the dark, don’t we? We’re looking for sparkly stuff out there, looking for some transcendence. We find it with our audience. With cinema, it’s the same. People go to church in the dark and look for the projected light of other stories. This is church for a lot of us—music, cinema, theater—because we’ve lost something.”
He knows that religion is a fraught topic, especially in America. “People have often got just enough religion to inoculate them against it. It’s hard for people who were brought up with a tough religious background, and I understand why people would walk away. But I haven’t. I’ve held on to my faith, and more importantly, my faith has held on to me.”
Fathers and Sons
If faith is one pillar of Bono’s life, family is the other. His mother died when he was just 14, leaving Bono and his older brother to be raised by their father. The loss was compounded by silence: “My father just never, for complicated reasons, never mentioned her name. So she kind of disappeared.”
The film is, in many ways, a quest to reclaim those lost memories. “I wrote the book to try and retrieve some of those memories from this river of silence we lived in at 10 Cedarwood Road on the north side of Dublin.”
His relationship with his father was fraught, defined by both love and conflict. “He had the audacity to ask me how I was going to become a professional musician considering I couldn’t sing or play. How dare he!” Bono laughs, but the sting is real.
On stage, Bono plays his father every night, switching his posture, deepening his voice: “You’re a baritone who thinks he’s a tenor.” It’s a line both funny and painfully true. “Actually, I am a baritone who thinks he’s a tenor. It’s a brilliant line. He has all the best lines.”
Over time, the combative relationship softened. “I learned through this play to like him as well as love him. And I made friends with my father after he passed, really.” It’s a lesson he shares with the audience: “I would advise anyone out there—that’s not the smartest. We fought a lot, we didn’t always speak. But you can make peace, even after they’re gone.”
The Ovation at Cannes
Stories of Surrender premiered at the Cannes Film Festival to a seven-minute standing ovation. Bono, ever the self-deprecator, tried to stop the applause, feeling embarrassed. “People are saying, ‘Don’t stop the ovation!’” he recalls. “But I just wanted to tell my wife, Ali, that this wasn’t a story I’d written myself. She had written it. And Edge, Adam, and Larry—they had written this story, too.”
For Bono, the ovation was less a personal triumph and more a moment to thank those who shaped his journey. “I shouldn’t have done that, though. I shouldn’t have thanked my family. I should have just taken the ovation.”
U2: The Sound of the Future
As for U2, Bono’s passion remains undimmed. The band is back in the studio, working on new material. “Nobody needs a new U2 album unless it’s an extraordinary one. And I’m feeling very strong about it—songs for the kitchen, the speedway, the garage, every part of your life. Songs to make up to, songs to break up to.”
The band’s sound, he says, is unique. “U2 makes a very unique sound when we play together. The sound of a room is what we’re going for. And Larry’s back from injury—he’s really innovative.”
On Springsteen, Trump, and Truth
Bono’s name has recently surfaced in American politics, with former President Donald Trump referencing him in a late-night social media post, lumping him alongside Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, and Oprah. Bono is unfazed. “To be in the company of Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, and Oprah—I play tambourine in that band.”
He’s quick to set the record straight: “U2 and I have never paid or played a show to support any candidate from any party. Never happened. It’s called Truth Social, but it seems to be pretty antisocial and not very true a lot of the time.”
Bono’s activism has always been bipartisan. “I co-founded the ONE Campaign, which is by design bipartisan. We’ve got very religious Catholics, evangelicals, conservatives, who are very angry with the person they voted into office having demolished instruments of mercy and compassion like USAID or PEPFAR, which saved 26 million lives of people with AIDS around the world. That’s the America that we love, that we want to be part of.”
And as for the perennial debate—Springsteen or Trump? Bono doesn’t hesitate: “There’s only one boss in America.”
The Next Generation
Bono’s children, too, are forging their own paths. His son Elijah fronts the band Inhaler, and is, Bono says, “completely not bothered by the fact that his father might be a bit famous.” The relationship is different from the one Bono had with his own father. “He’s very cool with it.”
He laughs about giving advice to his kids: “The great thing about advice is you don’t have to take it. And they haven’t.”
Surrender, and the Search for Meaning
In the end, Stories of Surrender is less about Bono the rock star than Bono the human being—searching, failing, loving, and, above all, surrendering. Surrendering to the flow of life, to the mystery of faith, to the complicated love of fathers and sons.
“I’ve held on to my faith, and more importantly, my faith has held on to me,” Bono says. It’s a line that could serve as the show’s thesis: that in the struggle, in the questions, in the darkness, there is light.
As the world watches Stories of Surrender, Bono invites us all to join him in the search—for connection, for meaning, for the extraordinary in the ordinary. And, perhaps, to find a bit of grace along the way.
