Lady Gaga Pre-Recorded Her Paris Olympics Performance for ‘Safety Reasons’

Lady Gaga’s performance at the Paris Olympics featured the singer descending a golden staircase along the Seine. The show was pre-recorded for safety reasons, as inclement weather impacted the Olympics opening show.

Lady Gaga’s performance was entirely in French and came part of the way through the opening ceremony, which took place all over France. Lady Gaga begins with only her legs visible, descending the golden staircase with dancers holding pink plumage. After popping out, Lady Gaga sang “Mon Truc en Plume” (“My Thing with Feathers”) while doing her choreographed routine on the stairs. She also slipped behind a piano briefly to play for spectators.

“Although I am not a French artist, I have always felt a very special connection with French people and singing French music—I wanted noting more than to create a performance that would warm the heart of France, celebrate French art and music, and on such a momentous occasion remind everyone of one of the most magical cities on earth—Paris,” she wrote on X/Twitter after her performance.

But many people watching the Olympics coverage online thought the performance was live. The Associated Press reports that Lady Gaga began to warm up around three hours before the opening ceremony began, while performing for about an hour before waving to fans as she left. Her appearance was a surprise to those in attendance as she was not listed on the program.

Speaking in an interview with Variety, opening ceremony choreographer Maud le Pladec says that Lady Gaga’s performance was the only one that had to be moved up once the weather forecast called for rain.

“For safety reasons, we had to pre-record late in the afternoon, once we knew for sure that it was going to rain,” she says. “We had minute-by-minute updates, we had never watched the weather forecast so closely in our lives. We assessed that it was going to be too dangerous for performers, even with a few drops of rain. Lady Gaga wanted to do it absolutely so we preferred to pre-record rather than cancel it.”