Lady Gaga has responded to a Facebook group made by her university peers claiming she would never make it in the entertainment industry.
The Joker: Folie à Deux star, who became the first person in history to win an Oscar, Grammy, BAFTA and Golden Globe in a single year in 2019, briefly studied at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts before leaving in 2005 to pursue a career in music.
Gaga, real name Stefani Germanotta, had begun performing under her now globally-renowned stage name when news of her new persona spread among her fellow students, leading to the Facebook group titled “Stefano Germanotta you will never be famous”.
Members of the Facebook group reportedly mocked Gaga for her aspirations to become a singer and criticised her early musical performances in Manhattan nightclubs.
Commenting on a viral TikTok video that included screenshots from the now-deleted “Stefano Germanotta you will never be famous” Facebook group, the 13 time Grammy winner gave some advice to aspiring stars:
“Some people I went to college [with] made this way back when,” she said. “This is why you can’t give up when people doubt you or put you down—gotta keep going.”
Gaga’s journey to international fame faced heavy criticism from her peers. Yet, three years after leaving New York University the singer released her debut album The Fame. Singles from the record, including “Just Dance” and “Poker Face” subsequently dominated global music charts.
In 2016, Gaga’s former classmate Lauren Bohn recalled how members of the Facebook group would mock the singer’s aspirations and even trample over flyers advertising her shows.
“I also remember one dude posting a flyer for one of her upcoming gigs at a local village bar,” she wrote. “He had clearly stomped on the flyer, an outline of his muddy [sole] struggling to eclipse her name.”
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Fans were quick to praise Gaga for pursuing her ambitions despite her peers’ negative response. “Success is the best revenge,” one person wrote, while another called Gaga their “inspiration”.
It comes shortly after the “Bad Romance” singer was mocked on social media for denying that her new film Joker: Folie à Deux is a musical.
Gaga and her co-star Joaquin Phoenix will perform song-and-dance routines while singing classic tunes like “Get Happy,” “For Once in My Life” and “That’s Life” in Todd Phillips’ sequel to his 2019 Joker. But Gaga has claimed the film is not a musical.
“I wouldn’t necessarily say that this is actually a musical in a lot of ways. It’s very different,” she told an audience at the Venice Film Festival.
“The way that music is used is to really give the characters a way to express what they needed to say because saying it is not enough.”
Social media users responded with ridicule, with one person questioning, “Girl that is quite LITERALLY a musical, what is going on?”