Lady Gaga says she had "no idea" that she copied Bette Midler's mermaid in a wheelchair performance.
Bette Midler did a similar stunt 30 years before the Poker Face star.
Gaga performed the stunt at a show in Australia on July 13 wearing a mermaid tail and sitting in a wheelchair.
The gimmick annoyed Midler who used Twitter to tell fans she had come up with the exact same performance 30 years previously.
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Gaga said: "I had no idea that she did that and I'm a huge Bette Midler fan.
"(It was) not (a Midler tribute) in the beginning… because I didn't know that she'd done (it), but I do now and I think it's great. Obviously I feel connected to women in theatre and women from the past.
"Maybe we're just cut from the same cloth. I couldn't hop around in that tail so I just stuck myself in a wheelchair. All I'll say is that I… admire her and find her to be one of the most brilliant and incredible performers, so that's all I'll say."
