Lady Gaga is getting candid about her take on Harley Quinn and how she drew upon her own dark experiences to convincingly play the character, who is Gotham City's volatile antihero in the DC Universe, in "Joker: Folie à Deux."
The Grammy-winning artist discussed with Vogue her role in Todd Phillips' forthcoming film, where she stars opposite Joaquin Phoenix, who plays Joker/Arthur Fleck, revealing how deeply personal the portrayal of the character was.
"Harley Quinn is a character people know from the ether of pop culture," she told Vogue. "I had a different experience creating her, namely my experience with mania and chaos inside — for me, it creates a quietness. Sometimes women are labeled as these overly emotional creatures and when we are overwhelmed we are erratic or unhinged. But I wonder if when things become so broken from reality, when we get pushed too far in life, what if it makes you … quiet?
"I would say that I worked from a sense-memory perspective: What does it feel like to walk through the world and be … braced, in an intense way? And what happens when you cover up all of the complexities beneath the surface?"
The singer also reflected on her past mental health struggles, while recording her 2020 album Chromatica, and how her fiancé Michael Polansky helped her.
"I was in a really dark place," the "A Star Is Born" Oscar nominee said. "I struggled for, like, many years before that. But everything started to change. Because I had a real friend who saw the ways in which I was unhappy and why. And he wasn't afraid to truly hold my hand. And get to know me. On a very deep level."
In a 2020 interview with Paper magazine, Lady Gaga alluded to her unhappiness, saying that happiness was an ideal that she could not always obtain, while discussing the themes of her album.
"Give me a break, [happiness is] not that simple," she said. "I have clinical depression. There's something going on in my brain where the dopamine and serotonin are not firing the same way, and I can't get there. If someone says, 'Come on, just be happy,' I'm like, 'You [expletive] be happy.'"
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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