Days after producers said singer wouldn’t perform Best Original Song-nominated Top Gun: Maverick power ballad due to Joker commitments, Gaga is a last-minute addition
The Academy Awards have added some last-minute star power as Lady Gaga will perform her Top Gun: Maverick power ballad “Hold My Hand” at Sunday’s ceremony, Variety reports.
Oscars producers stated earlier this week that Gaga would not be able to appear at the award show — the lone Best Original Song absentee — due to her commitments on the now-filming Joker: Folie a Deux.
“We have a great relationship with Lady Gaga and her camp,” Oscars executive producer and showrunner Glenn Weiss said this week. “She is in the middle of shooting a movie right now. Here, we are honoring the movie industry and what it takes to make a movie after a bunch of back and forth… It didn’t feel like she can get a performance to the caliber that we’re used to with her and that she is used to. So, she is not going to perform on the show.”
However, Variety reports that “several insiders” confirmed that Gaga — already a Best Original Song winner for A Star Is Born’s “Shallow” — will appear on the Oscars and perform her Top Gun track. Neither the Academy Awards nor Gaga have confirmed her attendance at press time.
In addition to Gaga, the Oscars will feature performances by Rihanna (“Lift Me Up” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever), Sofia Carson and Diane Warren (Tell It Like a Woman’s “Applause”), Stephanie Hsu, David Byrne and Son Lux (Everything Everywhere All at Once’s “This Is a Life”) and Rahul Sipligunj and Kaala Bhairava (RRR’s “Naatu Naatu”).
Sunday’s Academy Awards comes just a day after footage emerged of Gaga on the set of Joker: Folie a Deux, where she plays a psychiatrist-turned-villain Harley Quinn alongside Joaquin Phoenix’s clown prince of crime.
