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Liza Minnelli has blasted Lady Gaga and the Academy in her candid new memoir, where she recounted being forced to sit in a wheelchair on the Oscars stage.
The acclaimed actress and singer, 79, co-presented the academy award for best picture alongside the Poker Face hitmaker. At the time, she appeared disoriented on stage, with the singer-songwriter visibly offering her support.
Now, in a passage from her new book, Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!, the Cabaret star has confirmed she was ‘inexplicably ordered’ to sit in a wheelchair or forfeit the gig, despite requesting a director’s chair.
She continued: ‘I was told it was because of my age, and for safety reasons, because I might slip out of the director’s chair, which was bulls***.
‘I will not be treated this way, I said. My co-presenter [Gaga] insisted she would not go on stage with me unless I was in a wheelchair. I was heartbroken.’
According to the excerpt shared with People, she explained that the lower positioning meant she couldn’t ‘easily read the teleprompter’.
‘How would you feel if you were wheeled out, against your will, to perform in front of a live audience, and unable to see clearly?
‘So when I stumbled over a few words, Gaga, who was at my side, didn’t miss a beat to play the kindhearted hero for all the world to see. “I got you,” she said, leaning down over me,’ Liza recalled.
She added that later the Joker: Folie a Deux star came to check in on her in her dressing room after learning of her ‘distress’ and she simply told her ‘I’m a big fan’.
‘I learned this lesson years ago from Mama and Papa. At a moment of high stress, you stay gracious,’ she added.
In April 2022, shortly after the ceremony where CODA won best picture, her longtime friend and collaborator Michael Feinstein (who also co-authored this autobiography) made similar claims.
Talking on SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show at the time, he said she was left feeling ‘very disappointed’.
He claimed: ‘She only agreed to appear at the Oscars if she would be in a director’s chair, because she’s been having back trouble.
‘She said: “I don’t want people to see me limping out there.” She said: “You know, I want to look good. I don’t want people to worry about me.”‘
This occurred the same year Will Smith notoriously slapped Chris Rock, which Feinstein claimed inadvertently led to organisers changing the plan to a wheelchair at the last minute.
He concluded: ‘She was nervous, and it made her look like she was out of it. Can you imagine being suddenly forced to be seen by millions of people the way you don’t want to be seen? That’s what happened to her.’
Metro has reached out to Lady Gaga’s representatives and the Academy for comment.
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