American singer-songwriter Cher has performed at Las Vegas casinos, the Super Bowl, and Amanda Seyfried’s fictional Greek hotel.
However, her toughest audience may have been a 36-year-old elephant named Kaavan, whom she saved from captivity in Pakistan last November. Upon meeting the long-neglected creature, the pop legend fed him watermelon and serenaded him “really badly” with Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” she says with a laugh.
“It was so frightening for a singer, but then I thought, ‘What the hell,’ ” Cher says. “And what does Kaavan know? He hasn’t gone to any concert.” Cher’s melodious rescue mission is the focus of a new documentary, “Cher & the Loneliest Elephant,” now streaming on Paramount+ Thursday to commemorate Earth Day. It airs on Smithsonian Channel on 19th May.
Read more: Singer Cher will visit Pakistan to see elephant ‘Kaavan’
The hour-long film tracks the public campaign to save Kaavan, who was gifted by the Sri Lankan government to Pakistan shortly after his birth in 1985. He was soon placed in the Islamabad Zoo with his partner, an elephant named Saheli, who died in 2012.
Kaavan was frequently kept in small enclosed places with his legs shackled, and his physical and mental health deteriorated due to dire conditions.
