Gloria Gaynor on disco, trauma and survival: ‘My sister was killed trying to save somebody she didn’t know’

Raised in such poverty as one of seven children that her mother used to send her out with 25 cents to buy bacon skins for family meals. Sexually abused by a family member aged 12, and again aged 17. Speaking from her home in New Jersey ahead of a new documentary about her extraordinary life, the 80-year-old disco queen talks to Jim Farber about grief, faith – and how she survived it all

‘This is someone who has faced difficult challenges head on,’ says Betsy Schechter, director of ‘Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive’ (Supplied by PR)

Every pop fan knows that Gloria Gaynor sang the enduring hit “I Will Survive”. But few know just how thoroughly she has lived its lyrics. “That’s what made me able to sing the song with such conviction,” Gaynor, now 80, says via Zoom from her home in New Jersey. “That song is my story.”

Only now is the full extent of that story being told, thanks to a stirring new documentary titled Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive. For nearly two hours, the film details exactly how the singer overcame setbacks and traumas of near-biblical proportions. These include: the absence of her father; the murder of her sister; repeated cases of sexual assault; a philandering husband; and a near-deadly fall on stage that left her temporarily paralysed and in need of multiple surgeries. All this alongside roadblocks and disappointments that, at times, blunted her career and her creative ambitions.

“This is someone who has faced difficult challenges head-on,” the film’s director, Betsy Schechter, says. “That became the story.”