The team behind this year’s Oscars have shared the story behind how Lady Gaga ended up performing at the event on Sunday night.
Gaga received her third Academy Award nomination earlier this year for Hold My Hand, her contribution to the Top Gun: Maverick soundtrack.
Last week, producers confirmed that the Oscar winner would not be performing at this year’s ceremony, due to her commitments filming the new Joker sequel Folie A Deux.
However, the Bad Romance singer eventually had a change of heart, and delivered a surprise stripped-back rendition of Hold My Hand – sporting a t-shirt, ripped jeans and minimal makeup – during the live broadcast.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter after the Oscars, producers Ricky Kirshner and Glenn Weiss insisted they really didn’t think Gaga would be performing until the eleventh hour.
“Glenn honestly said on Wednesday that Gaga wouldn’t perform,” Ricky explained. “And then on Thursday and Friday that changed.
Of Gaga’s change of heart, he continued: “She really wanted to do something. She honestly was shooting her movie – there was no trickery involved.
“And Thursday, at four-something, we got a text that she wanted to try something, didn’t have time to put together a big performance, but wanted it to be raw and people to see the real Gaga, and, with a voice like that, you don’t need much more than that.”
In a separate interview with Variety, Oscars producer Molly McNearney insisted the team had “made peace with the fact” Gaga would not be performing before she eventually changed her mind.
“The irony, though, is she didn’t have a lot of time to think about it and committed a day or two before the show, otherwise I don’t know that she would have done something as stripped down as that,” Molly said. “It was really memorable.”
Molly also revealed a few more last-minute changes to the broadcast – including some “harder” jokes about Will Smith that ultimately ended up being cut.