Bachelor Nation Alum Carly Waddell Says Former Classmate Lady Gaga Drove Her Crazy in School

Carly Waddell has several reasons why she couldn’t stand her former classmate, Lady Gaga. The Bachelor Nation alum and performer was a guest on Jason Tartick’s Trading Secrets podcast, and opened up about being a student at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts alongside a young Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta. 

Waddell says that she and Gaga were the two students out of the 60 in their class who ended up dropping out of the program, and admitted that during their college days, she wasn’t exactly a Little Monster. 

“I was not a fan. This is why, because she was so talented… Stefani used to, during lunch, she would play on the piano… and she would sit at the piano every single day and just play and sing Wicked at the top of her lungs every single day,” Waddell recalled. “And we were all just trying to eat lunch. It was break time. And we were all forced to listen to her.” 

Waddell doesn’t deny that the Oscar and GRAMMY winner was talented, adding, “And yes, was she good? Of course, she’s great, but I would just want to eat my sandwich. I used to just eat in the hallway because she was driving me crazy.”

Saying that back in the day Gaga was “so extra,” Waddell added, “She’d wear these really tight leotards and she had really big boobs back then and her boobs are just coming up.”

Host Tartick asked if Gaga was “noticeably way better” than her peers, to which Waddell replied, “No. I wouldn’t say. She was one of the good ones, but I would never be like, ‘She was so above.’ But now she’s so above.”

Waddell noted that Gaga’s strengths lay in her original music, which she was performing as early as the NYU talent show. 

“I was like, you can’t argue that girl’s really good. She was good at everything, but she was better at her own stuff,” Waddell said. 

As for whether she’s a fan of Gaga now, Waddell said, “I wasn’t a fan of her at that moment, but I wasn’t my best at that moment either. We both dropped out of the program because we didn’t love the program.”

She added that she now loves Gaga’s music. 

Waddell appeared on season 19 of The Bachelor with Chris Soules. She was also on multiple seasons of Bachelor in Paradise, and married BiP‘s Evan Bass in 2017 though the couple split in 2020. They share daughter Bella and son Charlie. 

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