Cher with elephant Kaavan. Image: Zoobs Ansari/Smithsonian Channel
Cher felt powerless.
This is not an admission you expect from a woman who has been a superstar since the mid-1960s, with 100 million records sold and 3.9 million Twitter followers.
But when the pop star got involved in helping save an elephant stuck in a zoo in Islamabad under terrible conditions, Cher also had to fight an uncomfortable feeling. I kept saying to all my friends, I m just an entertainer, I m just an entertainer, Cher says now, as the streaming service Paramount+ debuts the documentary
Cher & the Loneliest Elephant (the documentary airs on the Smithsonian Channel on May 19). It s a film about the years-long effort to save Kaavan, a 4-ton, malnourished elephant who had been kept in chains for decades in a run-down area of the Islamabad Zoo in Pakistan before he was moved to a wildlife sanctuary in Cambodia last year.