Lady Gaga appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Thursday to promote A Star Is Born. However, discussion of her feature film debut and its accompanying soundtrack took a backseat to a much more pressing subject: her support of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, one of the women who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault.
The pop star has never been one to hide her political views, especially when it concerns women, the LGBTQ+ community, and survivors of sexual assault. Speaking to Colbert, Lady Gaga — herself a survivor — went into detail about how sexual assault can change the way one thinks and processes such a traumatic event. “The brain changes and literally what it does is it takes the trauma and it puts it in a box and it files it away and shuts it so that we can survive the pain,” she explained.
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Lady Gaga said sexual assault “also does a lot of other things, it can cause body pain, it can cause, you know, baseline elevations in anxiety.” She added, “It can cause complete avoidance of wanting to even remember or think about what happened to you.”
At a rally in Mississippi earlier this week, Donald Trump mocked Dr. Ford’s memory loss following her alleged sexual assault. “It’s one of the most upsetting things I have ever witnessed,” Lady Gaga remarked to Colbert.
On Ford’s willingness to come forward with her allegations, despite her trauma, Lady Gaga said, “…She was brave enough to share it with the world to protect this country.”
Watch the full interview below.
Previously, Lady Gaga contributed the track “Til It Happens To You” to The Hunting Ground, a documentary about campus sexual assault. She staged a powerful performance of the song at the Academy Awards, where she was accompanied by over 50 survivors of sexual assault.
A Star Is Born opens in theaters today; it is quite, quite good. The soundtrack is streaming in full here.
