Liza Minnelli may have been greeted with a standing ovation when she appeared alongside Lady Gaga at the 2022 Academy Awards, but the stage and screen legend says the experience left her “heartbroken.”

Last week, People published several jaw-dropping excerpts from Minnelli’s upcoming memoir, “Kids, Wait Until You Hear This.” Looking back at the 2022 Oscars, the “Cabaret” star said she had planned to sit onstage in a director’s chair, but was “inexplicably ordered, not even asked, to sit in a wheelchair or not appear at all” when she and Gaga presented the Best Picture award.

“They told me it was because of my age and for safety reasons, because I might slip out of the director’s chair, which was nonsense,” Minnelli wrote. “They won’t treat me this way, I said. My co-host insisted she wouldn’t come on stage with me unless I was in a wheelchair.”

Being in a wheelchair meant “I couldn’t easily read the teleprompter that was above me,” he explained. “How would you feel if you were taken, against your will, to perform in front of a live audience and you couldn’t see clearly?”

She also hinted that she found Gaga’s actions a little condescending: “So when I stumbled upon some words, Gaga, who was next to me, didn’t miss a beat to play the good-hearted heroine for everyone to see. ‘I’ve got you,’ she said, leaning over me.”

In her new memoir, Liza Minnelli (right) says it was
In her new memoir, Liza Minnelli (right) says she was “inexplicably ordered, not even asked, to sit in a wheelchair” when she appeared alongside Lady Gaga at the 2022 Academy Awards.

ROBYN BECK via Getty Images

News reached out to Oscar representatives for comment on Minnelli’s comments but did not immediately receive a response. In an email, a representative for Gaga declined to comment.

Singer Michael Feinstein, who worked on “Kids, Wait Till You Hear This,” previously argued that Minnelli had left the 2022 Oscars feeling “sabotaged.” He also suggested that organizers changed their plan for his old friend’s appearance at the last minute after being “shocked” when Will Smith slapped comedian Chris Rock during the broadcast.

“She was nervous and it made her seem like she was out of her mind,” she said in a conversation with journalist Jess Cagle at the time. “Can you imagine suddenly being forced to be seen by millions of people the way you don’t want to be seen? That’s what happened to her.”

In her memoir, Minnelli said Gaga visited her backstage after she was presented with the Best Picture Oscar for “CODA” and upon learning of her “distress.”

“I looked at her and simply said, ‘I’m a big fan.’ I learned this lesson years ago from Mom and Dad,” she wrote, alluding to her parents, actress Judy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli. “In a time of great stress, you must be kind.”

Over the years, Gaga and Minnelli have apparently enjoyed a friendly relationship. In 2011, Gaga cited Minnelli as an “inspiration” during one of her Monster Ball Tour concerts at New York’s Madison Square Garden, and the two women shared a hug backstage.