Indira Radic on Popovic list: what she told his wife

Indira Radic, 60, has described in a new interview how her name turned up on a published list of Sasa Popovic’s alleged mistresses, and how she used a flight to raise the subject directly with his wife, Suzana Jovanovic.

The list ran in the daily papers in the 1990s. Popovic and Jovanovic had been married only five or six months at the time, so it landed while the two of them were still settling into a shared life. Radic says she opened the paper in mid-air.

“We open the paper and there it is, a list of Sale’s mistresses, my name among them. God, how embarrassed I was”

Rather than let the story fade on its own, the singer says she walked straight over to Popovic’s wife. Jovanovic is a singer herself, so the exchange on that flight was between two colleagues off the same scene.

What Indira Radic said to Suzana Jovanovic on the plane

Radic says she skipped the preamble and went at it from the angle that Jovanovic knew Popovic better than anyone. Her opening line, by her own account, went like this:

“There you go, you live with Sale. He has probably told you a few things about himself, and you have surely asked him about me. I believe he did not lie to you, that he told you we were never together”

The reply she got was neither angry nor defensive, she says. Jovanovic cut the whole thing down to a single sentence:

“I know all that, Indira, but it does not interest me. What matters to me is that out of everyone on that list, I am the one who ended up being his wife!”

That, by Radic’s account, closed the subject. The two of them carried on with the flight.

What kind of relationship did Radic and Popovic have

The singer insists it was strictly professional and friendly, and that it never was anything else. She describes the compliments she got from him as his standard manner with every woman on the scene.

“Sale was never pushy, he always paid me compliments and would say: ‘Indira, you look perfect!’ That is how he behaves with all of his female colleagues, but there was nothing between us beyond a friendly and professional relationship”

She also recalls a joke he made about the whole affair. He told her, she says, that he had made her a good record and had not so much as laid a finger on her.

What is actually known about the list

Only a handful of firm details can be pulled from what the singer described:

• the list was published in the daily press in the 1990s
• Popovic and Jovanovic had been married five or six months
• the conversation on the plane happened because Radic started it

Radic does not name whoever compiled the list, nor say how many names were on it. She also does not say whether anyone else on it ever responded in public.

Why the story is resurfacing now

Sasa Popovic died on March 1, 2025. Since then, everything said about him on the Serbian music scene comes from the memories of colleagues and collaborators, with no second party left to confirm or deny it. Radic’s anecdote is exactly that kind of account. The part that played out on the plane has a living witness in Suzana Jovanovic, but for what supposedly did or did not happen between Radic and Popovic, her word is all there is.

Radic was born on June 14, 1966, which means she was in her thirties and climbing when the list appeared. Three decades later, the person telling the story is the one who was named on it, not the people who drew it up.