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'You Should Be Ashamed Of Yourself': Lady Gaga Sounds Off Against Celebrity Lawyer In Deposition

This superstar's fiery testimony did not disappoint.

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Lady Gaga (Photo by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)

As Little Monsters everywhere know, Lady Gaga sure knows how to put on a show, but the fireworks don’t stop once she gets off the stage. According to recently unsealed court documents, the pop singer-turned-actress was deposed in September 2017 as part of singer Kesha’s ongoing legal battle against producer Lukasz “Dr. Luke” Gottwald, and Gaga got into a really fiery exchange with Dr. Luke’s lawyer, Christine Lepera, one of the nation’s top music lawyers.

Before we get into the details, here’s background on the case, from the Daily Beast:

In 2014, Kesha accused Dr. Luke of forcing her to take a date rape drug and then taking advantage of her in a hotel room. He denied the allegation, and Kesha dropped her California suits against him in respect of the allegation in 2016, but other suits continued in New York.

Kesha has claimed that the producer denied her profits from her work including the smash single “Tik Tok.” Dr. Luke, in turn, filed a defamation claim and framed her attempts to get out of the record deal as extortion.

Gaga, whose real name (Stefani Germanotta) appears in the transcript, is a survivor of sexual assault, and her lawyer, Orin Snyder of Gibson Dunn, noted before she began to testify that the deposition served as a “trigger event” for his client. “She has experienced in the past few hours some PTSD reactions which is causing some trauma and emotional reactivity,” Snyder said. “So she is crying now the record will reflect.”

Later on, Gaga described a time when she saw Kesha wearing only her underwear in Dr. Luke’s home studio, and spoke of the singer’s “immense sadness and depression and fear,” saying she seemed “visibly very different than when I had seen her before.” Lepera then asked if Gaga thought Kesha’s rape accusation had damaged Dr. Luke’s reputation. “I made my view of him and his reputation when I saw her in that back room,” she said. “That was an image that—of something that happened to me, and I felt and knew in my heart that she was telling the truth, and I believe her.”

Here’s what happened next:

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Lepera: “With respect to Mr. Gottwald himself, you have absolutely no personal knowledge or information as to any interaction between him and Ms. Sebert, correct, physical or otherwise?”

Gaga: “Yes, I do have knowledge… She told me he assaulted her.”

When the lawyer asked if her information was based purely on Kesha’s account, Gaga replied: “Well, you know, when men assault women, they don’t invite people over to watch.”

Things went downhill from there, with Gaga issuing an exasperated “oh, ma’am” as Lepera’s line of questioning about her “factual knowledge” of Kesha’s alleged assault continued, unabated. From the deposition transcript:

Lepera kept going, using an awkward example of whether Gaga would automatically believe a victim who had accused her own father of rape. Gaga held steadfast in her testimony in support of Kesha, saying, “I believe her. And I know it to be true.” When Lepera once more asked, “You weren’t there, correct?” that’s when the superstar let loose on the celebrity lawyer, issuing this incredibly fiery response.

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“Don’t you roll your eyes at me. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

Let the record reflect that this may be the first time that a celebrity has uttered such words during a deposition. We would’ve paid good money to be a fly on the wall in the room where this proceeding took place just to see the look on Christine Lepera’s face after Lady Gaga dropped the depo mic like that.

Give this woman an Oscar already.

Lady Gaga Lambasts Dr. Luke’s Lawyer in Explosive Kesha Deposition [The Daily Beast]
Lady Gaga Defends Kesha to Dr. Luke’s Lawyer: ‘You Should Be Ashamed of Yourself’ [Billboard]

Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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