Liza Minnelli has opened up about her last appearance at the Academy Awards, where she presented Best Picture alongside Lady Gaga in 2022.
An Oscar-winning actress herself, Liza revealed that she was forced to present at the 94th Academy Awards ceremony in a wheelchair after previously agreeing to appear while sitting in a director’s chair.
“I was inexplicably ordered — not even asked — to sit in a wheelchair or not appear at all,” she has written in her upcoming memoir, Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!.
“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 bulls***,” she continued.
“I will not be treated this way, I said. I was heartbroken,” she revealed. “I was much lower down than I would have been in the director’s chair. Now I couldn’t easily read the teleprompter above me.”
“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?”
Further calling out her co-presenter, the Cabaret star added, “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.”
Liza also went on to disclose that when the songstress later visited her dressing room to ask if she was “okay”, she “looked at her and said simply, ‘I’m a big fan.’”
“I learned this lesson years ago from Mama and Papa. At a moment of high stress, you stay gracious,” she shared, referencing her famous parents, Old Hollywood star Judy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli.
Liza Minnelli’s book, Kids, Wait Till You Hear This! will be released on March 10.
