Lady Gaga has opened up about being raped and left pregnant when she was only 19.
Speaking on the first episode of Prince Harry and Oprah Winfrey’s The Me You Can’t See series featuring mental health issues, Gaga revealed she was raped at the age of 19 by a music producer who threatened to burn her music if she refused to undress.
“I was 19 years old, and I was working in the business, and a producer said to me, ‘Take your clothes off,’” she recalled. “I said no and I left, and they told me they were going to burn all of my music. And they didn’t stop.”
“They didn’t stop asking me, and I just froze and I… I don’t even remember,” she added.
Months later, the sexually assaulted singer was left pregnant without any support from the harasser.
“I [couldn’t] feel my own body,” she recalled. “First I felt full-on pain, then I felt numb, and then I was sick for weeks after.”
“I realised that it was the same pain that I felt when the person who raped me dropped me off pregnant on a corner, at my parents’ house, because I was vomiting and sick. Because I had been being abused, and I was locked away in a studio for months,” shared Gaga.
The singer burst into tears when describing that the trauma hit her years later when she won an Oscar Award in 2019. Gaga said that she experienced a “total psychotic break” because of her delayed traumatised response.
Lady Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, refused to name her perpetrator.
“I understand this #MeToo movement, I understand that some people feel really comfortable with this, and I do not,” said the singer. “I do not ever want to face that person again.”
Lady Gaga is one of the stars to be featured in The Me You Can’t See series which is co-produced by Harry and Oprah and airs exclusively on Apple TV+.
Britain’s Prince Harry and US chat show queen Oprah Winfrey will premiere their television documentary series on mental health issues later this month, with singer Lady Gaga and actress Glenn Close among those contributing.
The Me You Can’t See series, co-created and produced by Harry and Winfrey, will feature stories from high-profile guests and others across the world about mental health and emotional well-being issues, Apple TV+, the streaming service which will air the programmes from May 21, said on Monday.
Winfrey said the series aimed to spark a global conversation, and replace the shame surrounding mental health with wisdom and compassion. Among those participating will also be basketball players DeMar DeRozan from the San Antonio Spurs and Langston Galloway from the Phoenix Suns, Apple said.
“The majority of us carry some form of unresolved trauma, loss, or grief, which feels – and is – very personal,” Harry said in a statement.
“The last year has shown us that we are all in this together, and my hope is that this series will show there is power in vulnerability, connection in empathy, and strength in honesty.”
The prince, the sixth-in-line to the throne, has publicly spoken of his own mental health battles and dealing with the grief of the death of his mother Princess Diana who was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997 when he was just 12.
In March, he was named first chief impact officer of BetterUp Inc, a service that provides employee coaching and mental health assistance.
The TV series is one of the first ventures by Harry since he and his wife Meghan stepped down from official royal duties and moved to California to forge new independent careers. The couple have also signed deals to deliver programming for Netflix and to produce and host podcasts for Spotify.
It also comes after the couple’s explosive TV interview with Winfrey in March, which included Meghan accusing one unnamed royal of making a racist comment about their son Archie before he was born and plunged the monarchy into its biggest crisis in decades.
Prince Harry is reportedly “embarrassed and regretful” over his and wife Meghan Markle’s bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey. The interview plunged the monarchy into its biggest crisis since Princess Diana’s death in 1997.
Duncan Larcombe, author of Prince Harry: The Inside Story, told the UK’s Closer Magazine that Harry is probably feeling “regretful and embarrassed” after disclosing his family issues in front of the whole world. The biographer believes while Meghan seemed “in her element”, Harry “clearly looked numb and torn” upon leaving back for Los Angeles after attending late Prince Philip’s funeral ceremony.
Larcombe is convinced that the 36-year-old Duke of Sussex and his wife may have a problematic marriage in the future because Harry will remain nostalgic about the royal life which he has given up while Meghan will keep enjoying her life in LA which had been her longtime dream.
Duncan justifies Harry’s anger towards the Royal family as his “hot-headedness”.
“Harry was clearly hurt and angry about Meghan’s experience with the royals — and used the interview to get it out,” said Duncan. “But after returning home, I’ve no doubt he’s been feeling embarrassed, regretful and awkward. He’s now facing the consequences. I believe he’ll regret that interview — and maybe his decision to leave the royal family.”
“Coming home has reminded him of everything he’s sacrificed in recent years — and of the recent damage done,” added the author.
When asked what his predictions are about Harry’s future equation with his family, the expert said: “I can’t see how Harry can live this new life and keep things harmonious with his family,” adding that it will be a “lose-lose situation.”
“I just don’t think that Harry will be able to live harmoniously as a part of these two worlds — the royals and the LA showbiz world.”
Duncan warns Harry of embarking on a “very difficult” journey due to his decision of marrying Markle and bidding farewell to his Royal roots.
Trust Priyanka Chopra Jonas to pass the most inconsiderate comments ever.
The actor while speaking to Oprah Winfrey opened up about her religious side and gave an insight into how her life was while growing up.
Talking about her spiritual journey, Priyanka said that she had been influenced by different religions throughout her life, ranging from Hinduism to Christianity and Islam.
“With the swirling number of religions that live in the country [India]… I grew up in a convent school,” said Chopra. “So I was aware of Christianity. My dad used to sing in a mosque and that made me well aware of Islam. Being a Hindu and coming from a Hindu family, I adapted the rituals and teachings from Hinduism.”
“Spirituality is such a large part of India that you can’t ignore it,” she added.
Priyanka further shared that her late father educated her about all faiths.
“I am a Hindu. I pray and have a temple in my home. I do it as often as I can. But truly to me, I am a believer that a higher power does exist and I like to have faith in that,” she said.
Soon after Priyanka’s comments about her dad “singing” in a mosque went viral on social media, Ahsan Khan among countless others, expressed their shock over the actor’s religiously insensitive comments.
Besides Ahsan, several other social media users also expressed their outrage of the Priyanka’s comments.
Prince Harry has spoken to his father and brother after he and his wife Meghan Markle raised allegations of racism in the royal family during an explosive TV interview, a friend said Tuesday.
In the interview, Harry said that his father Prince Charles had cut him off financially and at one point stopped taking his calls, and also described his damaged relationship with Prince William.
The British monarchy has been rocked by the couple’s allegations that an unnamed royal asked how dark their child’s skin would be before he was born.
“I did actually call them to see how they were feeling, and it’s true Harry has talked to his brother and he has talked to his father too,” Gayle King, a US television presenter and friend of the couple, said on CBS.
“The word I was given was that those conversations were not productive, but they are glad they have at least started a conversation.”
King said the couple were “frustrated” that alleged racism in the royal family had dominated the news agenda since the interview was broadcast on March 7.
“All they wanted all along was for the royals to intervene and tell the press to stop with the unfair, inaccurate, false stories that definitely have a racial slant,” King said, adding that no one had spoken to Meghan as yet.
She added that Harry and Meghan wanted “healing” in the family, but that Meghan had “documents to back up everything” she had said in the interview with Oprah Winfrey.
As for what Meghan and Harry hope will happen in the future, King explained, “The family has to acknowledge that there are issues, and right now, no one is acknowledging, ‘Houston, we have a problem here.’ That’s really all they want. They want a conversation.”
.@GayleKing says Prince Harry & Meghan also shared that no one in the royal family had spoken with Meghan as of this weekend. Gayle continued, “They want healing in this family. At the end of the day, that is Harry’s family.” pic.twitter.com/Sv0rgiD6YL
The allegations, which the royal family said would be investigated, have plunged the monarchy into its biggest crisis since the death of William and Harry’s mother, Princess Diana, in 1997.
Meghan, a former actress, told Winfrey she was “naively” unprepared for life as a royal and had contemplated suicide while pregnant with their first child. On the other hand, Prince Harry said that he felt let down by his father Prince Charles and that his late mother Diana would have been angry and upset at the way the British royal family had treated his wife Meghan.
“My family literally cut me off financially,” Harry had said. “But I’ve got what my mum left me and without that we would not have been able to do this.”
Meanwhile, William while responding to the interview had said: “We’re very much not a racist family,” while Buckingham Palace, in a statement, said that they will address the couple’s grievances privately.
Meghan Markle, in a tell-all interview with Oprah, has given a rare insight into her relationship with Kate Middleton, admitting to the fact that their relationship has been tense.
When Oprah asked her to share details on media reports which stated that the Duchess made Kate cry in the days leading up to her wedding with Prince Harry in April 2018, Meghan said: “The reverse [of what was reported] happened. And I don’t say that to be disparaging toward anyone, because it was a really hard week of the wedding. And she was upset about something, but she owned it and she apologised and she brought me flowers and a note apologizing and she did what I would do if I knew that I hurt someone, right? To just take accountability for it.”
“What was shocking was, six or seven months after our wedding, that the reverse of that would be out in the world,” she added.
In November 2018, it was reported that Meghan had driven Kate to tears over dresses to be worn by the flower girls at the wedding.
Meghan told Oprah that it was actually Kate who’d been upset about “something pertaining to the flower girl dresses” and that the Duchess of Cambridge’s actions, which she refused to disclose, had made her cry.
“It really hurt my feelings,” Meghan said. “And I thought in the context of everything else going on in those days leading to the wedding that it didn’t make sense to not just be doing what everyone else was doing, which was trying to be supportive knowing what was going on with my dad and whatnot.”
Meghan asserted that it wasn’t a “confrontation” with Kate and that she has forgiven her sister-in-law. However, she said that it was hard for her later to be blamed by the media for something she didn’t do.
Meghan said she still doesn’t understand why the wedding communications team didn’t defend her.
“Everyone in the institution knew it wasn’t true,” she said.
When Oprah asked why the palace didn’t go on the record to dispel the story, Meghan responded, “That’s a good question. I would hope that [Kate] would’ve wanted that corrected. Maybe in the same way that the palace wouldn’t let anybody else negate it, they wouldn’t let her. Because she’s a good person.”
It is pertinent to add here that Kate’s youngest son Prince Louis was born less than a month before Prince Harry and Meghan’s wedding.
‘I didn’t want to be alive anymore’
Meanwhile, Meghan also said that she contemplated taking her own life after joining the royal family, and raised allegations of racism in the monarchy during an explosive television interview.
Explaining the couple’s dramatic exit from royal life, Meghan said she was denied help during her mental health crisis, was targeted by lies, and that there was official concern about the skin colour of her unborn son.
“I… just didn’t want to be alive anymore. And that was a very clear and real and frightening constant thought. And I remember how he (Harry) just cradled me,” she told Winfrey, describing the impact of a torrent of vitriol from hostile tabloids and social media.
“I went to the institution and I said that I needed to go somewhere to get help … And I was told that I couldn’t, that it wouldn’t be good for the institution.
“I remember this conversation like it was yesterday, because they said, my heart goes out to you because I see how bad it is, but there’s nothing we can do to protect you because you’re not a paid employee of the institution.
“This wasn’t a choice. This was emails and begging for help, saying very specifically I am concerned for my mental welfare.”
Asked if she had had suicidal thoughts while pregnant, Meghan replied “Yes. This was very, very clear.”
Meghan, 39, also told of royal “concerns” about “how dark” her son’s skin would be, saying Harry revealed to her official conversations over Archie’s appearance, as well as the security he would be entitled to, ahead of his birth on May 6, 2019.
“They didn’t want him to be a prince or princess, not knowing what the gender would be, which would be different from protocol and that he wasn’t going to receive security,” said Meghan.
“In those months when I was pregnant, all around this same time, so we have in tandem the conversation of, you won’t be given security, not gonna be given a title and also concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born.”
Asked who the conversation was with: “I think that would be very damaging to them. That was relayed to me from Harry, those were conversations the family had with him.”
Meghan and Harry welcomed their first child Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor in May 2019. They are currently expecting their second child. In the interview, the couple revealed that they are expecting a girl and that she is due sometime in the summer.
Later, when asked if she was not supported by the powers that be, she said: “There’s the family, and then there’s the people that are running the institution, those are two separate things and it’s important to be able to compartmentalise that because the queen, for example, has always been wonderful to me.”
The two-hour interview with the queen of US television was the biggest royal tell-all since Harry’s mother Princess Diana detailed her crumbling marriage to his father Prince Charles in 1995.
Prince Harry, who shocked Britain last year when he and his wife Meghan stepped back from royal duties, told Oprah Winfrey that he had worried about history repeating itself, according to excerpts released on Sunday.
The CBS broadcast network released two brief clips from Winfrey’s interview with the couple, which is scheduled to air on March 7. It is the first TV interview the couple, formally known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, have given since making their homes in California last year.
“My biggest concern was history repeating itself,” Harry said, apparently referring to his mother Princess Diana, who was hounded by the British press and died at age 36 in a car crash in Paris after her divorce from Prince Charles.
In the second clip released by @cbs of this Sunday’s @Oprah interview, Harry talks of how things were “unbelievably tough for the two of us” and spoke of his mother’s battles: “I can’t begin to imagine what it must have been like for her going through this process by herself” pic.twitter.com/GYQY4qAqn8
Harry, 36, was seated next to Meghan, 39, and holding her hand. The couple announced last month that they are expecting their second child.
“I’m just really relieved and happy to be sitting here talking to you with my wife by my side,” said Harry. “Because I can’t imagine what it must have been like for her (Diana), going through this process by herself all those years ago.
“It’s been unbelievably tough for the two of us, but at least we had each other,” Harry added.
In the clips, Winfrey, who is also one of Meghan and Harry’s neighbours in their Montecito neighbourhood in California, said that no subject was off-limits and at one point tells the couple “you have said some pretty shocking things here,” including that their situation had been “almost unsurvivable.” At another point, she questions: “Were you silent or were you silenced?”
As seen in the preview, Meghan and Harry will have individual interviews with Winfrey as well as a joint sit-down. According to a statement issued by the network, Winfrey, who attended the couple’s May 2018 wedding at Windsor Castle, “will speak with Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex, in a wide-ranging interview, covering everything from stepping into life as a Royal, marriage, motherhood, philanthropic work to how she is handling life under intense public pressure,” the network said in a statement.
“Later, the two are joined by Prince Harry as they speak about their move to the United States and their future hopes and dreams for their expanding family,” it adds.
Before they moved to California, the couple had complained about the British tabloids’ treatment of Meghan, whose father is white and mother is African-American, some of which they said amounted to bullying or racism.
Earlier this month, Buckingham Palace announced that the couple would not be returning to their lives as working members of the royal family, adding that Harry will give up his honorary military titles.
