‘I’m not sure who I am,’ says Lady Gaga – but there are clues in Joker

If you did not know that Paul Dini and Bruce Timm created the comic book villainess Harley Quinn for a Batman television series in 1992, you could be forgiven for thinking that the character in the new film Joker: Folie à Deux – a singer with an emerging dual identity who uses her artistry as an act of rebellion – was written for Lady Gaga.

Behind her very subtle clown make-up in Todd Phillips’ new take on the iconic comic book villain Joker, lurks the complex Harleen “Lee” Quinzel, just as behind Joker’s garish white, green and red paint is the tortured Arthur Fleck. And behind Lady Gaga, the superstar, we sit down to talk to 38-year-old New York-born Stefani Germanotta.

Or do we? Lady Gaga remains her preferred form of address when she’s working. But in truth, you’re never quite sure. “What I created in my musical career was, in a lot of ways, the great rebellion of my life,” Gaga says. “That’s mirrored in a lot of ways in this character; I would say that’s one of the main reasons I wanted to do the film.

Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga in Joker: Folie a Deux.

“How do we weaponise our identity to communicate and maybe say things that we don’t know how to say when we’re not that other person?” Gaga adds. “Arthur is this character that people might just push to the side in normal everyday life, but as the Joker ... you can’t take your eyes off him. He controls the room when he’s in it.”

There seems little doubt that in 2024 we are living through Peak Gaga. With five solo studio albums (plus two collabs, three soundtracks and more) to her name, she was baptised a film icon-in-the-making in the appropriately titled A Star Is Born, stunned everyone with her performance in House of Gucci and now dives head-first into the pandemonium of Joker: Folie à Deux.

Such a seamless transition suggests the two disciplines – singer and actress – are not so distantly related. “They’re not exactly the same, but the idea at the core of acting and also being a musician, the process that you’re undergoing, is ultimately trying to get to the truth,” Gaga says.

“The biggest difference is that for me, when I’m focusing on my own music, the circumstances are mine, and they’re beholden to my imagination,” she adds. “When you’re making a film, it’s the world of the script, the director, it’s the circumstances you’re in with the other characters. But the pursuit of truth is at the heart of both.”

When she saw the first Joker film, Gaga felt a powerful connection with Arthur Fleck, as Phillips intended to reveal him: not a monster, as his comic book history paints him, but rather someone who had been otherised his entire life. After growing up in a middle-class New York family, and attending an all-girls Catholic school, Gaga related to the idea of not fitting in.

“I think many people see themselves in that,” Gaga says. “This idea that some [people] that we may pass by on the street or might be overlooked or pushed to the side or diminished because they are different. Taking a moment to understand that person, that helps us understand the world better, understand each other better and ourselves as well.”

As a young performer, the creation of Lady Gaga came out of a fusion of proper music academia via New York’s prestigious Tisch School of the Arts, the city’s burlesque scene where she met and worked with DJ and performer Lady Starlight, and the songwriting world of the music industry, where she wrote songs for Britney Spears, Fergie and the Pussycat Dolls.

In person, she is cool and elegant, dressed stylishly but with eclectic touches that heighten her individuality. In conversation, she speaks in complete thoughts – a rare gift, even for seasoned, professional actors – and with such candour that it’s difficult to discern anything performative in her replies. She is both authentic and unplugged.

Over time too, as she has matured artistically, Gaga’s relationship with her reflected image – the character of Lady Gaga, that is, separate from Stefani – has shifted significantly, from something she saw as complex and challenging, to something that she now understands more clearly.

“I have realised over the years of playing lots of different characters that all of those people are inside of me and that the mirror is just this literal reflection of the outside, but there’s so much inside,” Gaga says.

“I think that’s why my reflection has always been different because I was always trying to make the outside an expression of what was going on inside,” she adds. “I see a human being when I look in the mirror, but I see a human being that’s maybe also always trying to figure out who they are.”

Lady Gaga’s character is obsessed with Joker (Joaquin Phoenix) in Joker: Folie a Deux.Credit: Warner Bros Pictures

Part of the tapestry that illustrates that journey is a series of powerful collaborations, both musical – with pop queen Beyoncé and crooner Tony Bennett – or more recently in films, with Bradley Cooper in A Star is Born, and Adam Driver in House of Gucci.

Into that frame now walks Joaquin Phoenix, the 49-year-old actor considered one of the finest of his generation, with a number of exceptional performances to his name: Commodus in Gladiator and Johnny Cash in Walk the Line among them. His performance as Arthur Fleck in the first Joker film won him the Oscar for best actor.

“He’s just incredibly gifted and soulful and deep; he’s a very, very deep person,” Gaga says of Phoenix. “I feel like I really got to know him. And I got to know him not only by speaking to him, but getting to know him through getting to know Arthur and getting to know Joker.”

The pair did not rehearse their scenes, Gaga reveals. “We shot immediately when we were working, so everything was very raw, very fresh,” she says. “But we would talk about it, we would talk about the scene, we would talk about what we were saying to each other, look for the truth, but we would not rehearse before.

“Any rehearsal that we did vocally also, in terms of the music, really depended on the moment,” Gaga adds. “For my character, I sing in a few different ways, depending on what’s happening and what we’re trying to say. So for some songs, I was more rehearsed and for others, I tried not to, so that it could come from a very different place.”

What is clear about Lady Gaga is that she commits totally, whether she is leaping from music into the movies, or slaying the Oscars audience with a peerless performance of songs from The Sound of Music and an encounter with its star, Julie Andrews, that left her shaking.

Lady Gaga says she got to know Joaquin Phoenix as a “very, very, deep” person.Credit: Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for Warner Bros. Pictures

I ask why she uses her artistry as such a propelling force. “I’ve just always been that way,” Gaga replies. “I love music and storytelling and filmmaking, watching films. Building characters is something that has helped to set me free as a person, as a woman over many years, making all of these different things.

“Ever since I was a little girl, I experienced my freedom as a child through my imagination,” she adds. “I think I spent a lot of time building characters and being close to the art because it’s the thing that makes me feel alive, and it helps me to understand myself better – and I think it’s also the way that I communicate.”

In addition to the release of Joker: Folie à Deux, Gaga has released her first album in five years, Harlequin, a “vintage pop” companion to the film’s soundtrack. Among its acoustic delights is a very different take on The Joker, by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley, better known to Australian audiences as the theme from Kath & Kim.

The album and the audience’s expectation of it fills her with gratitude, Gaga says. “I’ve been in this industry since I was a teenager, and it’s just totally an honour to have people care what I have to say. As an artist, I think that’s all you can hope for.

“Being yourself is always the most valuable part of being an artist because your perspective is what makes you unique, and it’s what people are here for,” Gaga adds. “It never changes. No matter the album, the show, the movie. I’m just always so excited, and I feel so grateful.”

‘I thought a lot about what it would be like, in this day and age, to play a woman that’s obsessed with a man.’

Lady Gaga

The experience of making Joker: Folie à Deux will also affect the music she will write in the future, Gaga says. “It already has,” she adds. “Every character that I create affects my music because it’s just all one thing. I am not someone who feels like the things you create have to be in sections or compartments. It’s fun to let them collide.

“Being a woman in art, people try all the time to tell you who you are or be like: explain this to me, could you explain to me who you are? And I really think there’s a lot of freedom in saying I’m not sure I know fully who I am,” Gaga says. “But I definitely know that music, film, stage, performances, make-up, fashion, these are the ways I communicate.”

As for the film itself, it is hectic and dark and chaotic. The musical sequences are stunning, though it seems a little askew to call it a musical, lest the audience confuse it for something made by Stephen Sondheim or Rodgers & Hammerstein. Its contradictory nature is the heart of its brilliance, Gaga says.

“There’s sometimes a desire when you’re making something to make it all make sense, and you go, one plus one equals two, or these two colours make this colour,” she says. “But human beings, we make mistakes all the time. We are walking contradictions. We say one thing and we do another. And yet, it’s all who we are.

“I thought a lot about what it would be like, in this day and age, to play a woman that’s obsessed with a man and that [obsession] defines her whole being,” Gaga adds. “Every choice that she makes, everything she does, is all rooted in a man – everything. And how does that make her fragile, but also, how is she also just totally in charge the whole time?

“So I focused on her admiration for somebody that was so pushed aside, and [who] she revered fully for taking the power back in his life,” she says. “And even though I know deeply her love of Joker, it was always also my firm belief that she loves Arthur too. That’s my unique perspective as a woman, that we can hold both of those things.”

Lady Gaga as Lee Quinzel, aka Harley Quinn, in Joker: Folie à Deux.Credit: Warner Bros

Which brings us back to the unresolvable duality of Harley Quinn and Harleen Quinzel, and of the inescapably paired Lady Gaga and Stefani Germanotta. “It’s just like putting on a skin or transforming,” Gaga says. “People do it all the time, it’s just the way that we do it that’s different. I am both Stefani and Gaga. I am both of those things and one of them is not pretend.”

So, will the real one stand up? Is it Stefani Germanotta or Lady Gaga? The answer, obviously, is Stefani. Or is it? Such is the magnificence of her artistry that you leave the conversation certain you know. But the more you search for the answer, the less sure you become.

Joker: Folie à Deux is in cinemas from October 3.

Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.