The conspiracy theorists who are convinced Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper are secretly in love presumably went wild with the thumbtacks and red string last weekend, after the pair eye-fucked each other like crazy during their performance of “Shallow” at the Oscars. The duet was extraordinarily horny, and the entire internet collectively came together to say, definitively, Oh, yeah. These two are definitely banging, right?
Well, now Lady Gaga has officially weighed in to remind us all of one salient fact: Actors, uh, act!
Videos by VICE
Gaga sat down with Jimmy Kimmel Wednesday night to discuss her Oscar win for Best Original Song and, naturally, Kimmel brought up the buzz surrounding her on-stage chemistry with Cooper.
“We were watching it at home and wondered, ‘What’s going on between these two?’” Kimmel said. “And it caused this big controversy because you had such a connection with Bradley, that instantly, and I guess this is a compliment, people started saying, ‘Oh, well they must be in love.’”
With a few sentences and one exasperated eye roll, Gaga shot down all the rumors, managing to roast the hell out of Twitter while she was at it.
“First of all, social media quite frankly is the toilet of the internet and what it has done to pop culture is abysmal,” she said. “And people saw love, and guess what—that’s what we wanted you to see! This is a love song, the movie is a love story.”
“I’m an artist, and I guess we did a good job,” she added. “Fooled you!”
Well, sure. That seems like a pretty reasonable point, since actors are paid millions of dollars to be good at, you know, acting. But also—that’s exactly what someone who is secretly fucking her co-star would say! She’s not just going to sit down with Kimmel and cop to getting freaky with Bradley Cooper in front of a live studio audience, is she? Also: She didn’t explicitly say they weren’t smanging. She just implied it when she denied that they were in love, right?
So Lady Gaga is an actor. Got it. But maybe this is her crowning dramaturgic achievement! Maybe she’s acting her ass off on Kimmel, in some kind of Inception-level play that involves, like, three levels of weird performative desire! We can spin this, everybody. There’s still hope for their romance. Don’t pull the blurry screenshots of the two of them making sex eyes at each other on that piano bench off your conspiracy wall just yet.
Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.
