Lady Gaga has clarified why she refused to even respond to the rumour that she was a man.
Early in Gaga’s career, the Poker Face singer – real name Stefani Germanotta – was subject to speculation she was actually a man, and was even asked about the conspiracy theories in an interview with Anderson Cooper in 2011.
During a special 60 Seconds with the Joker: Folie à Deux star, Cooper said: ‘There was a rumour that you had a male appendage, that you were a hermaphrodite…
‘A lot of artists would have put out some sort of statement saying “This is absolutely not true”, but you have fun with it.’
Completely unfazed, Gaga, 38, shrugged: ‘Maybe I do. Would it be so terrible? Why the hell am I going to waste my time and give a press release about whether or not I have a penis?
‘My fans don’t care and neither do I.’
The clip regularly gets praised on social media still to this day and now in an appearance on Netflix’s new documentary What Happened To Bill Gates? Gaga explains why she didn’t feel the need to quash up the rumours.
‘When I was in my early 20s there was a rumour that I was a man,’ Gaga told Gates.
‘I went all over the world. I travelled for tours and for promoting my records and almost every interview I sat in – there was this imagery on the internet that had been doctored – they were like, “There’s rumours that you’re a man. What do you have to say about that?”’
Gaga told Gates she ‘didn’t feel like a victim’ and recalled: ‘I thought, “What about a kid who is being accused of that who would think that a public figure like me would feel shame?”’
She continued. ‘I’ve been in situations where fixing a rumour was not in the best interest of the wellbeing of other people.
‘In that case, I tried to be thought provoking and disruptive in another way. I tried to use the misinformation to create another disruptive point.’
Gaga is currently promoting her new movie, the sequel to Joker, alongside Joquin Phoenix which Metro.co.uk said ‘surpasses the quality of its predecessor’.
She’s also tipped to release her sixth solo album in 2025 and is heavily rumoured to be headlining Glastonbury 2025.
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What Happened To Bill Gates? is available to stream on Netflix now.
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