Just how gaga is Bradley Cooper for his former co-star? On Nov. 17, the actor explained his true dynamic with Lady Gaga and what went down during their “Shallow” performance at the 2019 Oscars.

Fans of A Star is Born know that Ally and Jackson were off the deep end in love, but what about the actors behind the characters?

Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper sparked romance rumors in 2018 when the movie hit theaters. It was clear the co-stars had a close bond, with Gaga revealing that they had an “instant connection” that came “the second that I saw him.”

Despite rumors to the contrary, Gaga has long maintained they weren’t actually romantically involved.

“Yes, people saw love and—guess what—that’s what we wanted you to see,” the 35-year-old singer told Jimmy Kimmel in 2019. She knew the rumors were only fueled by their intimate performance of “Shallow” at the Oscars that year. But Gaga explained that Bradley had planned out the entire concert in extreme detail: “I knew that he had the vision for how it should go.”

So, does her story check out? Bradley finally addressed the rumors himself in The Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday, Nov. 17.

Lady Gaga’s House of Gucci Fashion

When discussing the Oscar performance of “Shallow,” Bradley confirmed they were definitely acting.

In fact, there’s a simple reason why it looked so steamy: “He had conceived the performance to unfold like a scene from the movie in part to help manage his own fears about singing live,” according to the outlet.

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Bradley shared, “Just from a personal standpoint, it reduces the anxiety level.”

As he noted, “They kind of fall in love in that scene in the film. It’s that explosive moment that happens to them on a stage in front of thousands of people…It would have been so weird if we were both on stools facing the audience.”

If that doesn’t clear up any remaining doubt, just know that Gaga later doubled down on her denial as well. “Quite frankly, I think the press is very silly. I mean, we made a love story. For me, as a performer and as an actress, of course we wanted people to believe that we were in love,” the House of Gucci star told Elle in November 2019. “And we wanted people to feel that love at the Oscars. We wanted it to go right through the lens of that camera and to every television that it was being watched on.”

When the movie came out, Bradley was in a relationship with Irina Shayk, but news of their split spread in June 2019. As for Gaga, she and fiancé Christian Carino reportedly called it off in early 2019, with her also confirming the breakup in June 2019. She’s now dating Michael Polansky, a math whiz who is on the board of San Francisco’s Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.

Keep scrolling to see everything Bradley and Gaga have said about each other.

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Rock Star Persona

“From the moment we met, I felt a kindred spirit in him,” Lady Gaga told Time about Bradley Cooper. “And as soon as I heard him sing, I stopped dead in my tracks. I knew he could play a rock star. Actually, he’s the only actor on the planet who could play this one.”

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“La Vie en Rose”

After hearing Gaga perform “La Vie en Rose” at a cancer benefit, Cooper went to Malibu to test his chemistry with her and it was magic.

“She was completely illuminated by the sun,” he told The New York Times Magazine in their October issue. “So charismatic. I thought inside my head, Oh, gosh. If she is like this on film, if that’s the worst case scenario that she’s this present on film, the movie will work.”

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Honored as a Friend

“I felt comfortable with Bradley—not just because he’s a hunk like Sam [Elliot]—but because Bradley is such a kind and loving and real person. I’m so honored to have you as my friend,” Gaga said at the American Cinematheque Award Presentation honoring Cooper in November.

“I’m so grateful to you, not just for making me a better actress, but I’ve been able to call on you as a friend, and cry and be myself and have you never ever judge me and still respect me as a professional,” she said. “I’ve never had an artistic experience like this before.”

She’s a Revelation

“You can’t hide when you sing. To me, the best way to express love is through singing and music. I knew that if I could marry that in a way, that’d be special,” Cooper told Robert Di Nero at the Tribeca Film Festival in April. “Lady Gaga is just kind of a revelation. But I don’t wanna say too much—maybe you’ll hate the movie, but I love it. I really love it. It’s the movie I set out to make, which is hard to say.”

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You Can Sing!

“What connected us immediately was when we first really met together,” Gaga told E! News’ Zuri Hall at EW’s Must List party at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival. “We had just an instant connection. I could just see it in his eyes. And when I heard him sing for the first time, I stopped dead in my tracks, playing the piano, and I looked over to him and I said, ‘Bradley, you can sing!’ Oh my gosh! It was wonderful.”

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Deep Love

“I love her so deeply,” Cooper told Time about his co-star. “It’s because we were at our most vulnerable together.”

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Life-Changing Partners

“This entire experience was life-changing…I don’t know that I’ve ever had a closer artistic relationship than I have had with Bradley, a closer exchange,” Gaga said in a press conference via Vanity Fair at the Toronto Film Festival. “It meant a lot to me, and I think to both of us, that at the beginning of making this film we kind of shook hands literally and he said, ‘You are an actress.’ I said to him, ‘You are a musician.'”

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Beautiful Inside & Out

“I’m just so glad God gave her the talent that she has and he chose her because that’s quite a vessel to go through,” Cooper revealed on Good Morning America about his co-star. “Because it’s really what you do with it, and she’s such a beautiful human being.”

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Changed for the Better

“It just has changed me,” Gaga told Entertainment Weekly about the film. “Watching Bradley work was phenomenal and then having him believe in me—it gave me more ammunition to believe in myself and I just feel so blessed to have had that experience.”

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Bonded in Belief

“We made a kind of deal: I believed in her as an actress, and she believed in me as a musician. I wanted there to be a meta aspect to the film, and Stefani gave me that,” Cooper explained to W Magazine.  “Also, no actress can do musically what I needed Stefani to do in 42 days of shooting: I needed plutonium. And the plutonium in A Star Is Born is Stefani’s voice.”

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Like Magic

“It was like a magic trick for us…really, he was like Houdini,” Gaga revealed during a post-screening Q&A moderated by Vanity Fair about Cooper’s ability to embody the self-destructing musician while still directing the cast.

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Plutonium Power

“Everybody already knows that she’s got a God-given talent as a singer, and she was able to utilize that plutonium to act,” Cooper told the Los Angeles Times of Gaga’s star power. “If this is something she wants to pursue, I will just have been lucky to have been part of her story as an actress.”

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Magical Meetings

“I remember every single moment of it,” Cooper told Entertainment Tonight about the first time he met Gaga. “From the moment she walked down the stairs, it was one of those magical things.”

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Fueled With Passion

“I was inspired by yours. [Your] relentless work ethic and a passion like gasoline,” the 32-year-old singer said about Cooper during an Academy Conversations interview this fall.

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Courageous Together

“The whole thing is that these two people found each other and it is a pure love. And it is easier when you have somebody with you going down the road. And I had that with Stefani going down this road. I can’t imagine having the courage to do it without her,” Cooper said at the film’s Toronto Film Festival premiere.

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Artistically in Sync

“I think the biggest thing I learned is that sky’s the limit if you find a companion artistically, and you have a project,” Cooper told Entertainment Weekly about working with Gaga. “There is no dreaming too big. What people can do together is so much more powerful than what they can do by themselves.”