Maybe Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper should’ve won those Best Actress and Best Actor Oscars.
Fresh off her Oscar win for Best Original Song for “Shallow,” Gaga visited “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on Wednesday — Oscar in tow, natch — and addressed the elephant on the internet that’s been around since “A Star Is Born” was released but was further fueled by her and Cooper’s sizzling performance Oscar performance: are they dating?
“Social media, quite frankly, is the toilet of the internet, and what it’s done to pop culture is abysmal,” Gaga said, hilariously rolling her eyes (watch above). “Yes, people saw love and, guess what, that’s what we wanted you to see. This is a love song, ‘Shallow.’ The movie, ‘A Star Is Born,’ is a love story.
“From a performance perspective, it was so important to both of us that we were connected the entire time,” she continued. “I mean, look, I’ve had my arm around Tony Bennett for three years touring the world. When you’re singing love songs, that’s what you want people to feel.”
“Are you having an affair with Tony Bennett, be honest?” Kimmel joked. “No, I’m an artist and I guess we did a good job and, fooled ya,” Gaga replied.
So there ya go, it was just acting, folks, nothing more. Have we learned nothing from our Friend Joey Tribbiani about chemistry: “The rule is when two actors are actually doing it offstage all the sexual tension between them is gone. OK? So as long as it’s hot on stage you got nothing to worry about. It’s when the heat goes away, that’s when you’re in trouble.”
Gaga said she and Cooper “worked so hard” to get the performance right, which started unannounced with the two walking to the stage and was shot from the stage, like how Cooper shot the film, and ended with them cheek to cheek on a piano bench. As previously revealed, the performance was choreographed by Cooper, and Gaga said she was happy to relinquish control over a stage performance because she trusted his vision.
“I was like, ‘What do you think, Bradley?’ And he laid it all out,” she said. “Everything that you saw — the way it was shot, the way that they pushed the piano out, you saw them put the piano together and us walk up on stage, no intro, all of that — that was all him.”
Asked if Cooper was terrified to sing live on the Oscars with her, Gaga emphatically said no. “Bradley’s a musician,” she said. “My favorite about the whole experience was I was just excited for not only the people at home, but our peers in the room, to see him sing live, and to know he sang every take in this movie live every single time. No lip-syncing. I was so excited and I was in the moment. But when we started and he started singing, ‘Tell me something, girl,’ the whole audience started cheering, and I was like, ‘Yes, Bradley! Yes, they love it, keep going! We’ve got this!’ It was great.”
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