After Lady Gaga’s stunning performance of Til It Happens to You, the real-life sexual assault survivors that were standing on stage in support of the singer filed off to receive an impromptu hug from Best Actress winner Brie Larson.
The Hollywood Reporter writer Chris Gardner posted the clip below from the audience.
Alicia Vikander then comes back to her seat clutching her #Oscars after having missed whole performance pic.twitter.com/dkir7XcWvi
— Chris Gardner (@chrissgardner) February 29, 2016
“Following Lady Gaga’s powerful performance of “Til It Happens to You,” best actress winner Brie Larson gets up and hugs each and every sexual assault survivor (she won an Oscar for playing a kidnap survivor who was repeatedly raped for years in “Room”). It’s a beautiful scene from where I’m sitting. #Oscars,” he wrote.
Lady Gaga co-wrote the song that started it all for the documentary film The Hunting Ground, which deals with campus rape in the United States.
Lady Gaga’s performance was introduced by Vice President Joe Biden, who encouraged Americans to take action against campus sexual assault and directed viewers to a website, It’sOnUs.org, which promptly crashed under the weight of sudden traffic.
“Let’s change the culture,” said. “We must, and we can.”
Wearing a white pantsuit and sitting at a white grand piano, Gaga poured herself into the song. The pop singer has said she herself was raped when she was 19.
“It’s such an important song for me,” Lady Gaga said on the red carpet before the show. “One in 5 women will be raped before they finish college.”
Til It Happens to You didn’t win the Oscar, though. That went to Writing’s on the Wall the theme song from the James Bond movie Spectre, co-written and sung by Sam Smith.
