October’s Joker: Folie à Deux isn’t simply bringing again Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck again, it’s additionally introducing his primary squeeze Harley Quinn. Performed right here by Woman Gaga and going by the identify “Lee,” she places some pep in Arthur’s step, and it appears to be like like the 2 are going to tear it up round Gotham Metropolis collectively. In response to 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, notably for the movie’s musical sequences. “Woman Gaga … is just not what this film is; I’m taking part in a personality,” she mentioned. “I labored so much 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 you 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 fallacious, 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 quite than a psych intern manipulated into loving him.
Director Todd Phillips mentioned components 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 girls 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 needed them to be for the film.”
Joker: Folie à Deux releases in theaters on October 4.
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