Lady Gaga, Pharrell, Ellen DeGeneres Lead 'The Love Project' Ad
In a time of division and partisan rancor, love is what we need right now. That was the overarching message in Lady Gaga's 30-second ad for "The Love Project," which debuted during Sunday night's Oscars. The spot, a collaboration with makeup giant Revlon, featured Pharrell and Ellen DeGeneres dancing and urging people to find ways to express their love.
"Love is embracing everything you are," Gaga says in the opening shot of the black and white PSA, cued to her ballad "Million Reasons." Sporting a head of long blonde hair with choppy bangs, Gaga makes her statement as Pharrell stares into the camera and DeGeneres moves through the frame doing a silly dance. "Love is why we're here," adds the daytime talk show queen, while the "Happy" singer notes, "Love is a light in the dark."
Gaga and director/producer Brett Ratner teased the campaign last week, and it appears that Ratner directed it. In one of the lighter bits, Gaga says love is "being at my grandma's house," to which DeGeneres responds, "Ooh, I love Lady Gaga's grandma's house!" Together, they argue, "Love is all we have... for a million reasons we need love now."
Gaga co-founded the nonprofit Born This Way Foundation in 2011 along with her mother, Cynthia Germanotta, with a stated mission of "empowering youth" and "inspiring bravery" through kindness, sharing resources on mental wellness and creating a positive climate in schools. The goal of the Theloveproject2017 is to spread the message that "the more love we put out there, the more the benefits multiply for all of us... It's why The Love Project's mission is to grow more love in the world by asking you to share you #Lovein3Words."
For its part, Revlon has committed support to a group of charities that promote "love, kindness, empathy and understanding," which include Gaga's BTWFoundation, Women's Heart Alliance, From One Hand to Another and The Trevor Project. According to the Love Project's site, they've tracked more than 1.6 million expressions of love in the first 24 hours of the campaign.
