Liza Minnelli expected to sit in a director’s chair when she made an appearance at the 2022 Oscars, but instead, she claims in her new memoir, the Academy insisted she sit in a wheelchair.
“I was inexplicably ordered — not even asked — to sit in a wheelchair or not appear at all,” Minnelli wrote in Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!, according to Variety. “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. ‘I will not be treated this way,’ I said. I was heartbroken. 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.”
Minnelli appeared with Lady Gaga at the event to present Best Picture, as the former had starred in the 1973 Best Picture winner, Cabaret, and won an Oscar for Best Actress; Minnelli’s appearance was to commemorate Cabaret’s 50th anniversary. Minnelli’s chair remained stationary during her appearance, during which she told the crowd how excited she was to be there. When Minnelli had trouble reading the notes, Gaga put her hand on Minnelli’s shoulder and said, “I got this,” and lauded Minnelli as a “true show-business legend.”
Minnelli stumbled on her words during the appearance, prompting Gaga to whisper (audibly in the mic), “I got you.” After a montage, the women sang a couple of lines from Cabaret’s “Willkommen.”
A rep for the Academy did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment.
“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?” Minnelli wrote in her book. “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.”
Variety reports that in the book, Minnelli wrote that Gaga came to her afterwards and asked if she was OK. “I looked at her and said simply, ‘I’m a big fan,’” Minnelli wrote. “I learned this lesson years ago from Mama [Judy Garland] and Papa [filmmaker Vincente Minnelli]. At a moment of high stress, you stay gracious. The winner for best picture that year was CODA. I loved the irony of the title for me. Writing my memoir would be my coda, my truth. There’s always a rainbow — if you know where to look for it.”
Before winning the best actress Oscar for Cabaret, the Academy nominated Minnelli in the same category for The Sterile Cuckoo in 1970.
