Oscars Producers Break Silence on Lady Gaga's Last-Minute Performance

03/13/2023 05:10 pm EDT

The 95th Academy Awards occurred on Sunday night, honoring the best in the past year of film through quite a few surprising moments. One of the biggest shockers was the performance from Lady Gaga, who sang her Best Original Song nominee, "Hold My Hand", from Top Gun: Maverick. In the days leading up to the Oscars, it was indicated that Gaga would not be among the ceremony's attendees due to a conflict with her filming the upcoming DC sequel Joker: Folie a Deux, which made her arrival at the show — and her minimalist performance of "Hold My Hand" — all the more surprising for viewers. 

"Honestly, and this is not to pat ourselves on the back, because we're very bad at that, but we've built up trust in the relationship with Gaga over the years — I did the Super Bowl with her and Glenn has done many awards shows with her, including the "Shallow" performance on the Oscars," Oscars producer Ricky Kirshner told The Hollywood Reporter. "She really wanted to do something. She honestly was shooting her movie [the Joker sequel] — 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."

"Some people make it and some don't," fellow producer Glenn Weiss said elsewhere in the interview. "Glenn honestly said on Wednesday [during a pre-show press conference] that Gaga wouldn't perform, and then on Thursday and Friday that changed. We just go with the flow and produce the show for the people that are there and the people that we're working with."

"Ricky's right. Maybe it's a different mindset for us coming from the world of live television, but things change all the time, Gaga being just one example of it," Kirshner echoed. We anticipate certain people showing up and then they don't, and then conversely, somebody who wasn't available suddenly was available last-minute. Our whole mode of operation is to be able to bend and mold and still create the show that we want, hopefully with the best names there, but regardless of who's there."

What is Joker 2 about?

Joker: Folie a Deux will be a musical that follows the twisted romance between Joaquin Phoenix's Arthur Fleck / Joker and Gaga's Harley Quinn, with a lot of the film reportedly taking place within Arkham Asylum. The film will also feature appearances from Zazie Beetz, Brendon Gleeson, Catherine Keener, and Jacob Lofland.

Are you excited to see Lady Gaga's Harley Quinn in Joker: Folie a Deux? What did you think of her Oscars performance? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

Joker: Folie a Deux is currently scheduled to arrive in theaters on October 4, 2024. 

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