Girl Gaga Needed to Un-Gaga Herself for Joker: Folie à Deux

October’s Joker: Folie à Deux isn’t simply bringing again Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck again, it’s additionally introducing his fundamental squeeze Harley Quinn. Performed right here by Girl Gaga and going by the identify “Lee,” she places some pep in Arthur’s step, and it seems to be like the 2 are going to tear it up round Gotham Metropolis collectively. Based on Gaga, placing a spin on Harley meant present process a little bit of a metamorphosis.

As a part of Empire Journal’s cover story on the sequel, the singer-actor defined her option to downplay her typical bombastic and showy presence, significantly for the movie’s musical sequences. “Girl Gaga … shouldn’t be what this film is; I’m taking part in a personality,” she stated. “I labored loads on the best way that I sang to return from Lee, and to not come from me as a performer.” Whereas Gaga is aware of how one can management her breath and rhythm whereas singing, Lee wouldn’t, so she needed to “take away the technicality” of being a pop star.

It additionally meant singing flawed, generally: “There’s loads of bum notes from her,” Gaga laughed. Utilizing music as extension of dialogue was “not like something I’ve ever executed earlier than.”

The unique Joker featured a reworked origin story for its title character, and the identical holds true with Folie à Deux and Lee. Whereas she’ll nonetheless fall for Joker, right here she’s a music psychiatrist for the inmates of Arkham Asylum relatively than a psych intern manipulated into loving him.

Director Todd Phillips stated parts of Harley have been retained for Lee, however in any other case, “it’s actually [Gaga’s] personal interpretation, and mine and [writer] Scott Silver’s.” He likened her to ladies who idolized Charles Manson and different killers behind bars, and famous, “We took issues about Harley within the comics and molded them into the best way we wished them to be for the film.”

Joker: Folie à Deux releases in theaters on October 4.

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