Lady Gaga on Dr. Ford: ‘She Was Brave Enough … To Protect This Country’
Lady Gaga defended Dr. Christine Blasey Ford during an impassioned interview on Thursday’s Late Show, calling the nationwide debate over her credibility “one of the most upsetting things I have ever witnessed.” The singer-actress called it “heartbreaking” that people have dismissed and ridiculed Dr. Ford, who alleges that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a teenage gathering in the early 1980s.
“I am a sexual assault survivor,” she said. “Trump the other day was speaking at a rally, and he said, ‘She has no memory of how she got to the party. Should we trust that she remembers the assault?’ And the answer is ‘yes’ … And I also know this woman is smart because she’s a psychologist – she’s no dummy. If someone is assaulted or experiences trauma, there’s science and scientific proof – it’s biology – that people change. The brain changes. What it does is it takes the trauma and it puts it in a box and it files it away and shuts it so that we can survive the pain.
“And it also does a lot of other things. It can cause body pain. It can cause baseline elevations in anxiety. It can cause complete avoidance of not wanting to even remember or think about what happened to you. But what I believe that have seen is that when this woman saw that Judge Kavanaugh was going to be possibly put in the highest position of power in the judicial system of this country, she was triggered, and that box opened. And when that box opened, she was brave enough to share it with the world to protect this country.”
Lady Gaga, on-hand promoting her role in the musical-drama film A Star Is Born, also spoke to Stephen Colbert about “shapeshifting” as a performer. With Ally, her character in the movie, she stripped away her makeup and used her natural hair color – but, she argued, it wasn’t a symbolic shift toward her true self.
“It’s not the way that I want to dress, necessarily, or the way I want to walk, or the way I want to be,” she said. “I had to really get inside of that. I changed my hair and took off my makeup months before filming because I had to get into character, and I had to get used to it. It was actually kind of liberating because nobody knew who I was.”
The vocalist also praised the “incredible” talent and leadership of Cooper, her director and co-star in the film. “There can be 100 people in the room, and 99 don’t believe in you and just one does. And Bradley Cooper believed in me, and I wouldn’t be here without him today,” she said.
As Colbert continued to contrast Ally and Lady Gaga, the performer emphasized the most important crucial trait they share: an undying musical passion. “Man, if I didn’t have an ability to show my songs, I don’t know who I would be,” she said. “It’s part of who I am. It’s part of what made me happy my whole life. If I wasn’t with you right now, I’d still be in a bar downtown, banging on a piano somewhere with my high heel on the keys, singing my brains off.”