Lady Gaga slams 'very silly' talk over Bradley Cooper romance rumours

Lady Gaga has slammed the "very silly" press for making so much of her Oscars duet with Bradley Cooper, insisting they "orchestrated" the entire performance to make viewers believe they were in love.

The A Star Is Born pair's heartfelt performance of Shallow at the 2019 Academy Awards hit headlines worldwide, with rumours later emerging that it was partly responsible for Bradley's subsequent split from Irina Shayk.

But speaking to Oprah Winfrey in a new interview for America's Elle magazine, Gaga insisted the speculation about the nature of her relationship with Bradley was "very silly".

Asked by Oprah how she dealt with the situation so well, Gaga replied: "Quite frankly, I think the press is very silly. I mean, we made a love story. For me, as a performer and as an actress, of course we wanted people to believe that we were in love.

"And we wanted people to feel that love at the Oscars. We wanted it to go right through the lens of that camera and to every television that it was being watched on. And we worked hard on it, we worked for days. We mapped the whole thing out - it was orchestrated as a performance.

"In truth, when we talked about it, we went, “Well, I guess we did a good job!”

Oprah added that when she spoke to Bradley about the rumours, he'd said his "Catholic guilt would have never let him be able to look you (Gaga) in the eye at that piano" had the affair claims been true.