Michael Feinstein, Minnelli’s old friend, said she was asked to appear on stage in a wheelchair at the last minute.
year 2022 Oscars The party was blown up over an hour ago by Will Smith, but when it came time to announce the Best Picture Oscar just after 11:00 p.m. ET, viewers were equally excited and a little dumbfounded to see Lisa Minnelli On stage with lady gaga.
Minnelli, the 1973 Academy Award winner for Cabaret, appeared on stage in a wheelchair, brought by her friend Lady Gaga, to announce CODA’s final honor for the night. Now, in a recent interview with SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show, longtime friend Michael Feinstein has claimed Minnelli was “forced” to appear on stage in a wheelchair even though she initially requested to be in the director’s chair.
Feinstein, a singer and recording artist, said Minnelli “was sabotaged. That’s a terrible word to use but she only agreed to appear at the Academy Awards if she was in the director’s chair, because she had back problems.” “I don’t want people to see me lame there,” she said. She said, ‘You know, I want to look good. I don’t want people to worry about me.”
Feinstein continued, “Then literally five minutes before moving on, when I sat in the director’s chair there, and because I think they were all shaken by everything that had happened earlier, the stage director said, ‘Well, you have to be in a wheelchair. “
IndieWire has reached out to Academy representatives for comment.
Feinstein said, “She was nervous, and it made her look like she was out of her. Can you imagine being suddenly forced to be seen by millions of people the way you don’t want to be seen? That’s what happened to her.”
Feinstein also claimed that Minnelli told him, “No, I won’t see in a wheelchair in front of everyone. I won’t do this. I refused to do this.” (across page six.)
He said that by the time she agreed to appear in the wheelchair, “she was so trembling that she felt disoriented.”
Feinstein added that while it’s a “shame” how it turns out Minnelli “works really well.”
According to Minnelli Scott Gorenstein’s previous publicist, her appearance at the Oscars was in direct order Lady Gaga.
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