Lady Gaga has revealed more details about the forthcoming Joker: Folie A Deux and the directions it takes.
Gaga stars as Harleen “Lee” Quinzel – a version of Harley Quinn – opposite Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck and the Joker. The sequel to 2019’s Joker will be released on October 4, exactly five years after the original film came out.
It is already known that the sequel will feature musical numbers, including classic tracks like ‘Get Happy’, ‘For Once in My Life’ and ‘That’s Life’, but Gaga has elaborated more on the film’s multi-genre approach.
“Todd [Philips, director] took a very big swing with this whole concept and with the script, giving the sequel to Joker this audacity and complexity,” she told Variety.
“There’s music, there’s dance, it’s a drama, it’s also a courtroom drama, it’s a comedy, it’s happy, it’s sad. It’s a testament to [Todd] as a director, that he would rather be creative than just tell a traditional story of love.”
Gaga had previously said that she had to change her singing voice for the film and elaborated in the interview on why the vocal performances are purposely unpolished.
“We asked ourselves what would need to be true for two people to just break into song in the middle of a conversation?” she said. “Where does the music come from when no one can hear it but the characters? Neither Arthur nor Lee are professional singers, and they shouldn’t sound like they are.
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“I think we all have an intimate and personal relationship with music in that there’s a score for our inner emotional lives. A score that no one can usually hear but us. That’s what we tried to capture for Arthur and Lee. The music inside them.”
She added that “some of the music is fantasy, some of it’s in the scene.” The songs were all performed live accompanied by a piano player who performed off-camera. The process made editing “a nightmare”, according to Philips – during post-production, the takes were spliced together into one seamless number and the actors later re-recorded parts of the songs.
Indeed, Phoenix said last month that Gaga was so impressed by his singing that she spat out her coffee when she heard him.
“I do seem to remember her spitting up coffee… so that felt good, that was exciting, and made me feel confident,” Phoenix shared.
“Gaga was always very encouraging of just, ‘go with what you feel, it’s fine,’ ” Phoenix continued. “For somebody who’s not a performer in that way, it can be… uncomfortable to do that, but also very exciting.”