A longtime collaborator and friend of Liza Minnelli claims that she was “sabotaged” at the 2022 Oscars ceremony. At the ceremony, Minnelli was accompanied by singer and actress Lady Gaga to the stage to present the nominees and winner for Best Picture, which ended up being CODA that evening.
It wasn’t long after the ceremony began that chaos erupted, and Will Smith slapped Chris Rock for making a joke about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. From then on, that was really the talk of the whole night, and anything else that could’ve been deemed newsworthy or worth talking about was overshadowed by the slap.
How Liza Minnelli was sabotaged at the 2022 Oscars
“She was sabotaged,” says singer Michael Feinstein on SirusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show. “That’s a terrible word to use, but she only agreed to appear on the Oscars if she would be in a director’s chair, because she’s been having back trouble. She said, ‘I don’t want people to see me limping out there.’ She said, ‘You know, I want to look good. I don’t want people to worry about me.’”
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Now, the slap isn’t the main and only reason the spotlight may have gotten taken off of Minnelli. Apparently, the setup changed very last minute because the organizers had been “shaken up” by the slap that had taken place earlier, and Minnelli was instead told that she would be seated in a wheelchair instead of the director’s chair she requested.
“She was nervous, and it made her look like she was out of it,” Feinstein said. “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.”
This moment at the Oscars was one of the many captivating moments that were overshadowed that evening, including celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Godfather, and many more memorable moments.
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