You may recall that, around this time last year, a bunch of memes advised you to “find someone who looks at you the way Lady Gaga looks at Bradley Cooper.” The pair had just done a very convincing, very high-profile job of playing two horndogs desperately in love, so there was a lot of longing gaze content to work with. Anyway, I am now revising that sentiment to, “Find somebody who looks at you the way Oprah looks at Lady Gaga,” due to events that unfurled behind the scenes at the WW 2020 Vision: Your Life in Focus tour in Fort Lauderdale on Saturday. Looks, holds, supports unconditionally, loves — any of those will do.
Lady Gaga, you see, appeared at the first stop on Oprah’s wellness tour, joining the nation’s premier bookclub host onstage to discuss, among other things, her mental health and fibromyalgia. (Bradley Cooper also came up, but that is neither here nor there.) Gaga discussed living with “head-to-toe pain,” according to Rolling Stone, and also the PTSD she says she developed after being raped at age 19, and “not processing that trauma.”
It was a long and candid conversation, and it appears to have affected Oprah deeply. After the interview, the media mogul went to find and hug Gaga, praising her effusively for being so honest.
“Where is she? Where is Gaga?,” Oprah says in a video of the encounter, posted to her Instagram. Oprah strolls into Gaga’s lounge area, arms thrown out and fingers splayed in the manner of the truly bowled over.
“Can I tell you, you were so amazing,” Oprah, voice cracking, croons as the singer walks toward her. “You were so good! You were so vulnerable, you were so truthful, you were so real.” Gaga — risen from her couch and frozen in the middle of the floor — is crying now, too, her hand clamped over her mouth in awe.
“I couldn’t even believe you were doing that!,” Oprah continued, weeping lightly in gratitude. “I was like, ‘Am I hearing correctly?’ Oh my God, you were so real, so good, so strong, so you! It was so good. Thank you for doing that for me.”
“Of course I would,” Gaga responded. “That’s what happens when you’re in the presences of an angel.”
But Oprah didn’t come for the compliments; she brushes them aside, sweeping Gaga into another tender embrace. Then, pulling back and shaking her pride and joy gently by the shoulders, she looks Gaga in the eye: “To be the truth that way? Nobody does that. And you know that. Nobody does that, nobody. And you just did it.”
The mom energy is big, my friends. And heading into this most curséd of years, already aflame after just five days, I think it is what each of us needs. Aspiring war criminals excepted, of course.
