Lara Meade

If you frequent gossip websites for a bit of escapism during the workday, like I do, then I’m sure you know about the lawsuit Lady Gaga’s former assistant filed for unpaid wages. The former assistant, Jennifer O’Neill, who only made $75,000 per year, is suing Gaga for $393,000, plus damages, for what she alleges is 7,168 hours of unpaid overtime while working on her tour from 2009-2011. You can click here to read the entire article on this in the New York Post.

O’Neil claims Gaga didn’t pay overtime, which Gaga doesn’t deny, and doesn’t feel she had to because O’Neil had great living conditions, was a subpar assistant, and didn’t work 8 hours straight, but throughout the day. Here are some gems directly from the deposition regarding Gaga’s “reasoning.” On keeping her staff like well-kept pets in lieu of compensation, “[O’Neil] slept in Egyptian cotton sheets every night, in five-star hotels, on private planes, eating caviar, partying with [photographer] Terry Richardson all night, wearing my clothes, asking YSL to send her free shoes without my permission.” On the fact that O’Neil was a subpar employee, despite hiring her twice, because she was not psychic enough for her needs, “I expect there to be a certain level of, like, you know, knowledge and academia about, like, your job,” she said. Gaga says that a good assistant “is somebody that can anticipate what you need before you need it, so they buy it for you, or they - they set it up for you.” But, Lady Gaga has apparently never heard of labor laws and on-call time, and feels she only needs to pay people for the hours that they’re physically laying out her clothes and holding her tea, not the time that they’re waiting to be beckoned. “This job is a 9-to-5 job that is spaced out throughout the day.” In her deposition, according to the New York Post, Gaga said she “made it clear” that “I expect you to be working and to be available 24/7.”
The bulk of my experience in the entertainment industry is as a personal assistant [PA], and the common complaint that you hear from a lot of PA’s in the industry is that they have to work long hours for low pay. Some people look at this time as “paying their dues” because it’s honestly a time-honored tradition. However, when you work for a celebrity there’s a good chance that you’ll have to deal with abusive behavior and impossible demands, on top of eating ramen every night and not having a social life.

When you become an assistant to a celebrity you become a part of a well-insulated world that tells a celebrity what they want to hear and does whatever they ask. The celebrity is a meal ticket for everyone from the lowly PA, to his or her management team, to his or her PR teams, so these people will put up with a lot of outlandish demands. So when this Monster rants about how “[O’Neil] thinks she’s just like the queen of the universe...and, you know what, she didn’t want to be a slave to one, because in my work and what I do, I’m the queen of the universe every day.” I have no doubt that there are people who tell Gaga this every f-ing day. But Jennifer O’Neil was part of this team of sycophants who reinforced this behavior. I don’t think that Ms. O’Neil bears all the responsibility here, but I do believe that she should shoulder some of it. O’Neil worked for Lady Gaga once before the disputed 2009-2011 period, so she knew that Gaga didn’t pay overtime. When she was hired back she should have negotiated an appropriate rate or not taken the job at all. But this doesn’t excuse Lady Gaga’s oversight of basic labor laws.

Lady Gaga should try being a good business owner who follows labor laws, and less like the queen of universe with well-kept slaves, and maybe she’ll avoid lawsuits in the future. But I have a feeling I’m expecting too much. The queen of the universe shouldn’t have to tax her beautiful, artistic mind on mundane things like that. Because ART!