There was much more drama that occurred during the 94th Annual Academy Awards besides the slap heard around the world.
Liza Minnelli’s surprise appearance with Lady Gaga toward the end of the live telecast was supposed to be a celebratory return of the living legend, who won the coveted statue for 1972′s “Cabaret.”
But Minnelli’s close friend and musical collaborator Michael Feinstein, who said he accompanied her to the Oscars, said she was “sabotaged.”
The singer, pianist and ambassador of the “Great American Songbook” revealed Minnelli’s noticeably awkward presentation of the best picture prize was the doing of show producers who hoodwinked the 76-year-old Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Award recipient.
“She was sabotaged,” Feinstein told Jess Cagle during a Monday appearance on his popular SiriusXM show.
“That’s the terrible word to use, but she only agreed to appear on the Oscars if she would be in the director’s chair, because she’s been having back trouble,” he explained, giving a blow-by-blow of what transpired backstage at Los Angeles’ Dolby Theater.
“And she said, ‘I don’t want people to see me limping out there.’ She said, ‘You know, I wanna look good. I don’t want people to worry about me.’ ”
But minutes before Minnelli was set to take the stage during the March 27 ceremony, Feinstein said producers flipped the script.
“Literally five minutes before she went on, when she sat in the director’s chair [backstage] there, and because [everyone], I guess they were all shaken up because of everything that had happened earlier, the stage manager said, ‘Well, she has to be in a wheelchair,’ and Liza pleaded. She said, ‘No, I will not be seen in a wheelchair in front of everybody. I will not do this. I refused to do this.’”
Feinstein, who appeared alongside Minnelli on a Jan. 16 episode of “CBS Sunday Morning” and accompanied her to the awards, said the stage manager told her, “it’s either that or nothing.”
“I said, ‘What do you wanna do?’ and she said, ‘I’ll do it.’”
Onstage, Minnelli appeared to have trouble reading the teleprompter. Lady Gaga told her she had her back, and helped her finish her line.
Feinstein described his close friend as “so shaken that she was discombobulated. She was nervous.”
“I mean … it made her look like she was out of it,” he continued. “And she was just so shaken up that it was.”
“Can you imagine being suddenly forced to be seen by millions of people the way you don’t wanna be seen?” he said. “That’s what happened to her. And she was very disappointed at that, that that happened, and it was not what was agreed to.”
Though the “New York, New York” belter is “really doing well,” Feinstein said “it’s a shame that it turned out that way and she was very disappointed.”
Reps for Minnelli did not respond to the Daily News’ request for comment.
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