Credit: Warner BrosLady Gaga has long been known for projecting a diva image, but it seems that she is taking it to new levels for her upcoming Batman-adjacent movie Joker: Folie à Deux.
Filming for Joker: Folie à Deux wrapped in April (just in time to avoid the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes), and now some odd details about Lady Gaga’s behavior on set are coming out.
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Cinematographer Lawrence Sher recently gave an interview in which he revealed that he felt like he did not feel like he ever actually met Lady Gaga during production, despite working face-to-face with the Chromatica singer for months. Even more curiously, it seems that Lady Gaga refused to respond to her own name and told Sher through an intermediary to refer to her only by her character name.
“Joker: Folie à Deux” director of photography Lawrence Sher says Lady Gaga opted to be called “Lee” on set. pic.twitter.com/Rv32mOHBrY
— Lady Gaga Now 🃏 (@ladygaganownet) July 20, 2023
Sher says:
“Strangely, I felt like I never even met her, even during the makeup/hair tests. Because again, maybe it was my philosophy of not trying to get in their space. And then I remember for a week, being like, god, I feel like we are disconnecting. Not even connecting. We are like on opposites. And I would say to my crew, ‘Jesus, I can’t, like, crack it. She either hates me or we hate each other. There’s something weird going on here.’”
Obviously, stars like Lady Gaga are used to certain kinds of spaces, and not every co-worker connects. However, the next part is a little bit more odd:
“I barely said anything, except I would say, ‘Stefani, this is where your second team was, minor little things,’ and then the AD at one point said, ‘Oh you know, Stef would like if you just called her Lee on set.’ And I was like, oh, 100 percent, and I literally said, the next thing I said, was something ‘Lee,’ and it was like everything changed.”
Lady Gaga’s birth name is Stefani Germanotta, but it appears that during the course of filming Joker: Folie à Deux, she only wanted to be addressed by her character’s name, or rather a short version of it.
Joker: Folie à Deux will star Lady Gaga as Dr. Harleen Quinzel, a DC Comics character better known as Harley Quinn. While Margot Robbie has played a live-action version of the character for a number of years in the little-loved DCEU, director Todd Phillips’ Joker movies are reportedly in a different continuity than both those movies and Matt Reeves’ Batman movies.
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Joker: Folie à Deux will star a returning Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck, who reportedly will meet Lady Gaga’s Dr. Quinzel (or “Lee”) while in Arkham Asylum. The movie will also co-star Zazie Beetz, Catherine Keener, and Brendan Gleeson.
It is not terribly unusual for actors to use forms of what is known as “Method” acting, a much-debated school of thought that often leads Oscar-hopeful actors to remain in character while shooting; from the sounds of it, Lady Gaga is going all-in for Harley Quinn. Maybe she has another Academy Award ahead of her.
Are you looking forward to Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn? Let us know in the comments below!