The Lady Gaga-Bradley Cooper A Star Is Born rumor mill feels almost nostalgic at this point, now that Cooper has split from partner Irina Shayk and the singer has returned to her Vegas residency and fallen off the stage. However, it was just earlier this year that the duo enchanted an entire Oscars crowd with their performance of "Shallow," and had fans convinced the two were secretly dating. Lady Gaga squashed those rumors shortly after the performance, but in conversation with Oprah Winfrey for Elle Magazine, the two talked more in depth about the impact of the speculation.
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"[Bradley and I] were talking about all the rumors about you guys last year," Oprah explained. "He said if they had been true, he never would have been able to look you in the eye sitting at that piano."
Oprah commended Lady Gaga for handling the rumors so well, but the artist was a bit more frank about the situation.
"I think the press is very silly. I mean, we made a love story. For me, as a performer and as an actress, of course we wanted people to believe that we were in love. And we wanted people to feel that love at the Oscars," she explained, echoing the point she made to Jimmy Kimmel earlier this year. "We wanted it to go right through the lens of that camera and to every television that it was being watched on. And we worked hard on it, we worked for days. We mapped the whole thing out—it was orchestrated as a performance."
What's not a performance? Cooper's role as a dad. Both women refer to him as a "beautiful father," and the public got a taste of that when he brought his 2-year-old daughter, Lea, to the 22nd Annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor event last month. Gaga is nowhere near being Lea's new stepmom — instead, Lea will just have to settle for having the "Million Reasons" singer as her fun, cool aunt.
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