Lady Gaga says she was pregnant after sexual assault at age 19

LOS ANGELES • American pop star Lady Gaga has revealed that she became pregnant after she was raped at the age of 19.

The 35-year-old singer was the guest on the first episode of The Me You Can't See, a new docuseries co-created and produced by Britain's Prince Harry and talk-show host Oprah Winfrey.

The series, which launched on streaming service Apple TV+ yesterday, features interviews with celebrities about their struggles with mental health.

"I was 19 years old and I was working in the business, and a producer said to me, 'Take your clothes off,'" Lady Gaga told Winfrey.

"I said no, and I left, and they told me they were gonna burn all my music."

She recalled in tears: "And they didn't stop. They didn't stop asking me and I just froze and I just... I don't even remember."

Lady Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, would not name the producer.

"I understand this #MeToo movement, I understand that some people feel really comfortable with this, and I do not," she said. "I do not ever want to face that person again. This system is so abusive, it's so dangerous."

She first went public about her sexual assault in a radio interview on The Howard Stern Show in December 2014.

Two years later, she revealed that she suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder.

On The Me You Can't See show, she recounted that several years after she was raped, she went to a hospital for chronic pain and was surprised when she was treated by a psychiatrist instead of a medical doctor.

"I said why is there a psych here, I can't feel my body," she said.

"First, I felt full on pain, then I went numb and then I was sick for weeks and weeks and weeks after."

She continued: "And I realised that it was the same pain I felt when the person who raped me dropped me off pregnant on a corner, at my parents' house. Because I was vomiting and sick. Because I had been being abused. I was locked away in a studio for months."

She said the trauma led to "a total psychotic break" for a few years, which was still plaguing her when she won the Oscar for Best Original Song for Shallow in 2019,

The song is featured in 2018's A Star Is Born and is a duet with her co-star Bradley Cooper, who also directed the film.

Lady Gaga said the improvement in her mental health was "a slow rise" and not a "straight line".

"Even if I have six brilliant months, all it takes is getting triggered once to feel bad," she said.

It took her 21/2 years to recover as she "learnt all the ways to pull myself out of it".

She added: "It all started to slowly change."