Liza Minnelli may have been greeted with a standing ovation when she appeared alongside Lady Gaga at the 2022 Academy Awards, but the stage and screen legend says she was left “heartbroken” by the experience.
People published several jaw-dropping excerpts from Minnelli’s forthcoming memoir, “Kids, Wait Till You Hear This,” last week. Recalling the 2022 Oscars, the “Cabaret” star said she’d planned to be seated onstage in a director’s chair, but was “inexplicably ordered — not even asked — to sit in a wheelchair or not appear at all” when she and Gaga presented the award for Best Picture.
“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 bullshit,” Minnelli wrote. “I will not be treated this way, I said. My co-presenter insisted she would not go on stage with me unless I was in a wheelchair.”
Being in a wheelchair meant that she “couldn’t easily read the teleprompter above me,” she explained. “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?”
She also hinted that she found Gaga’s actions a bit patronizing: “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.”
In her new memoir, Liza Minnelli (right) says she was “inexplicably ordered — not even asked — to sit in a wheelchair” when she appeared beside Lady Gaga at the 2022 Academy Awards.
ROBYN BECK via Getty Images
HuffPost reached out to representatives for the Oscars for comment on Minnelli’s remarks, but did not immediately hear back. In an email, a rep for Gaga declined comment.
Singer Michael Feinstein, who worked on “Kids, Wait Till You Hear This,” previously argued that Minnelli had left the 2022 Oscars feeling “sabotaged.” He also suggested that organizers changed their plan for his longtime friend’s appearance at the last minute after being “shaken up” when Will Smith slapped comedian Chris Rock during the broadcast.
“She was nervous, and it made her look like she was out of it,” he said in a conversation with journalist Jess Cagle at the time. “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.”
In her memoir, Minnelli said Gaga checked in with her backstage after they presented the Best Picture Oscar to “CODA” and upon learning of her “distress.”
“I looked at her and said simply, ‘I’m a big fan.’ I learned this lesson years ago from Mama and Papa,” she wrote, alluding to her parents, actor Judy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli. “At a moment of high stress, you stay gracious.”
Over the years, Gaga and Minnelli have seemingly enjoyed a friendly relationship. In 2011, Gaga cited Minnelli as an “inspiration” during one of her Monster Ball Tour concerts at New York’s Madison Square Garden, and the two women shared a hug behind the scenes.