The director of Prince Harry and Oprah's mental-health series says Lady Gaga relived her trauma for those who couldn't share their own stories

• Lady Gaga discussed being impregnated by her rapist in Prince Harry and Oprah Winfrey's docuseries.
• Dawn Porter is co-director and executive producer of the series, titled "The Me You Can't See."
• Porter told Insider about what it was like to interview Gaga for the series.

Lady Gaga opened up about the trauma she says she experienced after being impregnated by a music producer who raped her when she was 19.

Speaking in "The Me You Can't See," an Apple TV+ docuseries about mental health created by Prince Harry and Oprah Winfrey that was released Friday, the singer, now 35, said she experienced a "total psychotic break" after the abuse.

Dawn Porter, an award-winning filmmaker who co-directed and executive-produced the five-part series, conducted some of the interviews shown in the series, including the one with Gaga for the series' first episode, entitled "Say It Out Loud."

Porter spoke to Insider about her interview with the singer and why the star decided to relive her trauma on screen.

Lady Gaga appeared in the series to help those who couldn't share their own stories, according to Dawn Porter

The "Rain on Me" singer told Porter that she sought hospital treatment for physical pain years after being raped.

"I realized that it was the same pain that I felt when the person who raped me dropped me off pregnant on a corner by my parents' house because I was vomiting and sick 'cause I'd been being abused," Gaga said in the interview. "I was locked away in a studio for months."

"I've had so many MRIs and scans, they don't find nothing. But your body remembers," she added later in the interview.

As Insider's Claudia Willen previously reported, in recent years, Gaga - whose real name is Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta - has said she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and fibromyalgia, a condition that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes as causing widespread pain.

Porter told Insider that Gaga agreed to appear on the series after taking part in Winfrey's wellness tour in January 2020, where she talked to the TV host about her experience receiving treatment and therapy.

"She expressed that she would continue the conversation essentially that she had started with Oprah," Porter said, adding that "it was hard for her. She had to relive some of those traumas."

"She said many times during the interview that she was doing it for the people who haven't been able to tell their story," she said. "She wanted people to know that if it happens to you, it's not the end of your world, because it felt like the end of her world when she was going through it."

Porter said those participating in the series wanted to help others going through a hard time

Porter said this mindset was "common for so many people participating in the series."

"They said that they went through this and they wanted to help somebody else," she said. "There was a real generosity of spirit."

A number of people made an appearance on the series, including actor Glenn Close, NBA player DeMar DeRozan, mental-health advocate Zak Williams, and chef Rashad Armstead. Winfrey and Harry also spoke about mental-health issues they have respectively faced, and Harry volunteered to have his own therapy session filmed for an episode.

Porter co-directed the series alongside BAFTA and Grammy-winning filmmaker Asif Kapadia, and was an executive producer for the series with Harry, Winfrey, Terry Wood, Catherine Cyr, Alexander H. Brown, Jon Kamen, and Dave Sirulnick. A team of mental-health professionals also worked on the series.

Porter told Insider that the greatest thing she took away from making the series was "this belief that someday mental health and mental illness will be treated the same way that physical health is."

"That you can say, 'I'm going to the doctor, I'm going to my therapist,' and that's just part of the human experience of wellbeing," she said.

Representatives for Lady Gaga did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.