Lady Gaga Talks Strip Mall Facial Injections, Boyfriend Taylor Kinney, Perez Hilton, Madonna, Drugs and More With Howard Stern

In another epic interview with the radio host, pop superstar gets real, expresses thank she's not just doing regular old press for ArtPop

By Natalie Finn Nov 12, 2013 10:32 PMTags
Lady GagaNeilson Barnard/Getty Images for SiriusXM

Lady Gaga told Howard Stern this morning that she was ready for a "good interview" after doing nothing but album promotion for the last month.

So that's what she got—and what she gave.

Be it the reason she thinks that Madonna doesn't like her and what that had to do with her explosive feud with Perez Hilton, getting addicted to strip mall Juvéderm, her "dream wedding" and how she makes it work with boyfriend Taylor Kinney, Gaga sat for over an hour on Stern's Sirius XM Radio show and the stream of conversation never stopped. 

Here are some of the hot topics they touched on:

On her very recent (like, last year) strip mall filler phase:

"I've never had any work-work done, but I went through a phase when I was smoking pot when I was really obsessed with getting facial injections...I was going to this strip mall in Chicago in the back…Everybody was like, 'You are a nut job.'...I'm telling you, I wasn't exactly in the best frame of mind, and I would smoke a bunch of joints and have some drinks and I would be like, 'Oh, let's go see my girl' and we would drive to this strip mall and I would get shot up with a bunch of whatever, Juvéderm, and then leave...Now all the stuff is gone. Before I shot the 'Applause' video, [a photographer friend] was like, 'Gaga, I love you but if you don't stop injecting s--t in your face I'm going to just kill you.'"

On whether she's going to marry her boyfriend, Chicago Fire actor Taylor Kinney, and how they make it work:

"When people say 'marriage'' to me...It's always a means to an end. Everyone's so in a rush to define the relationship. I'm just really happy...I am lucky to be with somebody that has a great job...We don't have any rules about calling each other at certain times. We'll go days at a time without talking. Then we'll talk every day. The way that it really works is, we trust each other. He's on his journey, and I'm on mine., and we're gypsies—and then when we're together we're really in love."

Her "dream wedding," should she actually take the plunge:

"I am the center of attention in my job every single day, the thought of a wedding to me is exhausting. Why would I put myself through that? I want to go to David's Bridal. Here's my dream wedding: David's Bridal,  grooms go on the men's side, girls go on the female side. We get completely hammered, we get the the worst dresses we can find and then we go to the courthouse."

On why Madonna seems to have an issue with her—and why Gaga vs. Madonna leads to so-called feuds:

"I think she's more aggravated that I'm not upset that she doesn't like me.'Cause I don't care that she doesn't like me...No, I don't care...It's such nonsense...[Attacks from people like Perez Hilton are] really rooted in Madonna, that's the center of it. It's silly...There's always this pissing match: 'She's taking her torch, is she the new her, is she going to outlast her or not?' There's this thing with some people that I'm a threat to the throne. I don't want your f--king throne, no thanks, I have my own. I actually don't want a throne at all, because I don't view myself as a queen, I view myself as one of my fans."

Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for 42 West

Her recent admittance that she was smoking 15 to 20 joints a day after hip surgery: 

"I only recently mentioned it because it seems like young people think you can't be addicted to it. You can. I couldn't live without it. I'd wake up at 5:00 in the morning, smoke, go back to sleep. Fifteen to 20 joints a day...I was feeling out of control with my career, I was feeling exhausted...You start to become successful and everybody starts to drive your money train to the bank and they're not thinking anymore about what you want as an artist or if any of that even matters to you. It genuinely upsets people in my life that I don't care about money, and that's not my problem."

On what the heck happened with Perez Hilton:

"We were doing an interview. I took two days out of my schedule when I was on a world tour to do an interview for him to support a show he was doing...and in the middle of the interview he started asking me really terrible questions. He was being very negative about Born This Way and we had had a lot to drink. He was supposed to be my friend and I felt betrayed, so I started crying. My friend had to come in and pull the camera out, they wouldn't turn the cameras off...He apologized, but I sort of felt like it was like, 'But I'm Perez Hilton so I'm allowed to treat you this way.' I looked at him and said, 'Just because you are who you are, does not mean that our friendship doesn't mean anything when the cameras turn on. So, now I see who you really are.' And I was done after that...I really believed, when I first met him, that he wanted to change. I really believed that he wanted to bully people less on his site and that he wanted to move into a more positive space."

 Her accusation that Perez was trying to stalk her:

"He tried to move into my apartment [building], next door to me. I freaked out so much about it because I have no rights....I went completely crazy on my Twitter...My sister was sleeping there and it made me scared and upset and then he lied and told everybody he wasn't stalking me, but that next day, after I asked him to leave me alone, he put an offer in on two apartments in the building...There's only one reason: to hurt me or harass me or blow yourself up. if you hate me, hate me from over there. Continue to fire away on your blog and your Twitter."

On the damage she suffered from her early experiences with record companies and then getting so famous so fast:

"I've had drug and drinking problems ever since I've starting coming into this business. There were things that affected me so deeply that I just couldn't recover and I didn't thave any time to talk to anyone or fix those problems. I became a star. And all of a sudden I'm a star and everything's great but nobody realizes...I'm trying to act like nothing's wrong and filling the void with alcohol and cocaine and marijuana and ecstasy and LSD—you name it, I've tried it...I'm not angry, I'm in pain."