Lady Gaga Dishes on Her 2008 The Hills Cameo — and Whether Lauren Conrad and Whitney Port Did a ‘Good Job’ as Her Publicists

One of Lady Gaga’s first TV appearances happened in an unexpected place: a 2008 episode of The Hills.

Gaga opened up about the experience when she took part in Vanity Fair’s Lie Detector Test, published Feb. 19. The outlet gave her a photo of stars Whitney Port and Lauren Conrad and reminded her that they were part of her publicity team as interns during the show. They asked if Gaga remembered their names, and, after a moment of thought, the 38-year-old “Abracadabra” singer recalled both.

“Did they do a good job?” the outlet asked. “Yes,” Gaga answered (though the lie detector was “inconclusive”). They also asked the classic Hills question — if Lauren should have gone to Paris — but Gaga didn’t remember the context.

During her appearance on The Hills, in the fifth episode of season 4, Gaga performed at a small party. She wore a full-body, leather-like catsuit with gold chains and a black, white and red scarf wrapped around her blonde hair. She also had a lightning bolt painted on her face.

But just moments before she performed, the zipper broke, and she ended up on camera when she asked Port and Conrad, now both 39, to help her fix it. After a few tense moments, they succeeded; the future Grammy winner even declared, “Lauren, you’re superwoman!”

Gaga — who was then just months away from releasing her debut album The Fame — gave them both a hug before going on and performing her song “LoveGame.” That track ultimately became a No. 5 hit.

But at the time of her Hills appearance, Gaga wasn’t famous just yet, and Conrad and Port were mostly discussing Conrad’s fight with Audrina Patridge during the event. Their boss, PR magnate Kelly Cutrone, even told them before the event that Interscope was launching “some girl named Lady Gaga who apparently is their new big signing.”

Back in 2018, The Hills creator Adam DiVello spoke on the Bachelor Party podcast about how her cameo was totally unexpected. “We didn’t even know who she was. We were like, ‘What are we filming? What is this?’ ” DiVello said. “We were just there. We didn’t really know what we were doing. Kelly Cutrone introduced us to her … and at the time, we were like, ‘Who is this girl?’ “

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“Even the girls were like, ‘Are we filming all night with her?’ Because she was performing a couple of songs at the thing,” DiVello said. “The fact that the dress broke was great and they fixed her dress was kind of perfect.”