Jimmy Kimmel didn’t host the Oscars this year, but he did score the first big interview with Lady Gaga after she won for Best Original Song this past Sunday night. And yes, he asked her the one question that everyone wanted him to ask.
“This Sunday night, millions of women around the world became furious with their partners for never looking at them the way Bradley Cooper looked at our first guest during their show-stopping musical performance,” Kimmel said in his introduction.
After she sat down—and placed her Oscar on his desk—Kimmel got down to business.
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“That performance that you and Bradley gave, that was really one of the great performances in the history of the Oscars,” Kimmel said as his audience howled. “We were watching it at home like, what’s going on between these two?”
Noting the “controversy” that has followed the steamy performance, Kimmel told her, “You had such a connection that instantly—and I guess this is a compliment—people started saying, ‘Oh, they must be dating, they must be in love.”
Gaga responded with a massive roll of her eyes. “OK, first of all, like, social media, quite frankly, is the toilet of the internet,” she said. “And what it has done to pop culture is just abysmal. And yes, people saw love, and guess what? That’s what we wanted you to see.”
“This is a love song, ‘Shallow,’” Gaga told Kimmel. “The movie, A Star Is Born, is a love story.”
The rumors were fueled by the fact that while Cooper’s longtime girlfriend and mother of his child, Russian supermodel Irina Shyak, was seated in the audience at the Dolby Theatre Sunday night, Gaga publicly split with her fiancé, talent agent Christian Carino, just one week before the Oscars.
Kimmel was even more explicit about the whole thing in his monologue on Monday night following the awards. “That was quite a performance,” he said then. “Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper have so much sexual chemistry, about a minute into the song, my wife started ovulating.” He added, “A star was born and a baby was almost born.”
Gaga told Kimmel that she and Cooper worked all week on the Oscar performance, explaining that the direction of it was “all him.” From a “performance perspective,” she added, “it was so important to both of us that we were connected the entire time. Look, I’ve had my arms wrapped around Tony Bennett for three years touring the world. When you sing love songs, that’s what you want people to feel.”
“Are you having an affair with Tony Bennett?” Kimmel asked. “Be honest.”
“No!” Gaga replied. “I’m an artist, and I guess we did a good job. And, fooled ya!”
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