Liza Minnelli Reveals Jaw-Dropping Truth Behind That Oscars Appearance With Lady Gaga

One of Minnelli's collaborators previously said the stage and screen icon had felt "sabotaged" by her experience at the 2022 Academy Awards.

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.”