Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper Are Planning to Perform “Shallow” at the Oscars

Lady Gaga may no longer be pulling out all the stops on the film’s press tour, but rest assured: She’s still very much riding the wave of A Star Is Born, the most recent remake of the Hollywood classic in which she stars as the aspiring singer Ally alongside Bradley Cooper in the role of a floundering country rock star, Jackson Maine. Not only has the film grossed $300 million at the global box office since its release in October, with its soundtrack, which debuted at number one on Billboard‘s 200 albums ranking, continuing to dominate charts, but as Gaga tells Variety, both are still very much on her mind.

“I feel Ally inside of me,” she said in a new interview, accompanied by a photo shoot which saw her wear the same taupe men’s shirt Cooper wore to play Maine, and re-create Ally’s signature move of tracing her nose. “I wonder how long she’ll stay. Or if she’ll be in there forever.” In a true testament to her connection with the character, she even recently “snuck in” to a screening of the film at her local theater, which she said she had to make herself leave before its emotional ending. Even though she’s apparently already seen it five to 10 times, it still “moves me so deeply. I feel so entrenched in the character that the second half of the film—without revealing what happens—is so emotional and tragic. I have to take myself out of it.” (She’s also still attached to Maine: In addition to his shirt, she’s held on to a few other “heirlooms,” like a bottle of Mr. Bubbles that can be seen in the pair’s romantic bathtub scene.)

Ally is guaranteed to stay with Gaga at least until this coming awards circuit, seeing as the film—and particularly its breakout song “Shallow,” a duet between her and Cooper—is widely considered to be this year’s Oscars front-runner. Whereas its success at the Golden Globes is a bit up in the air, there’s already been talk about its potential success in Academy Awards categories like Best Picture, Best Director (which would go to Bradley Cooper), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor (also Cooper), and Best Actress for Lady Gaga, whose songs from the soundtrack—in addition to “Shallow,” there’s also “I’ll Never Love Again” and “Always Remember Us This Way”—might bring home even more wins for A Star Is Born.

Gaga has been offered other films since, but has refrained from reading scripts. She’s cautious of the pitfalls of being a celebrity, which she first learned of after the acclaimed release of her 2009 album The Fame Monster. “There’s a lot of pain you go through. Everything changes. Your whole life changes,” she said, describing an experience that, of course, Ally learns throughout the film as well.

For the time being, Gaga is instead focusing on another performance. If “Shallow” is indeed nominated for best song, Gaga says she’ll “100 percent” perform it at the Academy Awards, having come to consider it now more relevant than ever. “We are living in a time where there’s so much conversation about women’s voices being heard,” she said. “Men listening to those voices—and also, men not listening to those voices. Women being silenced in very public ways, like Dr. [Christine Blasey] Ford with Justice [Brett] Kavanaugh. Judge Kavanaugh being appointed is basically like telling every single woman in the country that’s been assaulted, ‘We don’t care. Or we don’t believe you.'”

If all goes according to plan, Cooper will be right there along with her for the performance, which he’s in fact already been prepping for. “We talked about that actually, because I’m such a maniac,” he told Variety. “I started texting her the whole pitch of how we should do it. So we’ll see. There might be a cool, unorthodox way we could perform it.” (Hopefully, those ideas won’t resemble anything near Maine’s own awards show cameo.)

Related: How Lady Gaga’s Pop Songs in A Star Is Born Were Made