In just a few days, the public will get to see a new actress portray Harley Quinn in a live-action movie following Margot Robbie’s run as the character in the DC Extended Universe. Lady Gaga is putting her own spin on Harley in the upcoming DC movie Joker: Folie à Deux, informally known as Joker 2, which picks up two years after the events of the first Joker movie. There’s already been praise thrown Gaga’s way for her performance in this DC Comics adaptation that sees her acting opposite Joaquin Phoenix, but Gaga admitted that inhabiting the role also impacted her home life with her fiancé, Michael Polansky.
Lady Gaga discussed this subject while explaining how the movie inspired her new album Harlequin, which collects reimagined covers that she and Phoenix sing in Joker, as well as two original songs. The singer-songwriter and star of movies like A Star is Born and House of Gucci started off by telling EW:
I wasn’t finished with this character when I was done making the movie. Creating her had a deeply profound effect on me. The way I prepare for things, Michael also got to know Lee pretty well, and it’s why we conceived of this project together.
Naturally we’ve already seen snippets of what Lady Gaga will be doing as Harley Quinn, referred to as Lee in this movie, thanks to the first Joker: Folie à Deux trailer and the subsequent previews, but it’s nice to get extra insight on how actors handle their roles. Clearly Gaga poured a lot of herself into bringing Lee to life, as was evident by how Michael Polansky, who was nowhere near the Joker 2 set, grew familiar with the character, which in turn led to the creation of Harlequin. Gaga also spoke more to how her version of Harley Quinn is meant to celebrate “complex female characters,” saying:
We wanted to make something to celebrate the complexity of a woman who has danger within her and also bore a sense of sweetness and couldn’t be defined. The way you can’t define Lee in the movie, you also can’t define her in this album, through genre.
Michael Polansky is credited as a songwriter on Harlequin, and Lady Gaga praised her fiancé for his “tremendous creativity” and called him “closer to me artistically than most people” in her life. So if you’re a fan of Gaga’s music and looking forward to listening to Harlequin, then you also have to give him props. Without Polansky’s contributions, it sounds like the album wouldn’t exist.
Rather than starting out as a psychiatrist in Arkham Asylum as she’s traditionally depicted, Lady Gaga’s take on Harley Quinn is a fellow patient at Arkham alongside Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck. Upon meeting Arthur, Lee becomes obsessed with him, and from there they form the unsettling romantic relationship that has been explored in media many times for over three decades now. Joker 2’s cast also includes Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener, Zazie Beetz, Steve Coogan and Harry Lawtey, among others.
Make sure to read CinemaBlend’s Joker: Folie à Deux review before seeing the movie starting Friday, October 4. If you’re interested in streaming the first movie beforehand, you’ll need a Max subscription.
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Adam Holmes
Senior Content Producer
Connoisseur of Marvel, DC, Star Wars, John Wick, MonsterVerse and Doctor Who lore, Adam is a Senior Content Producer at CinemaBlend. He started working for the site back in late 2014 writing exclusively comic book movie and TV-related articles, and along with branching out into other genres, he also made the jump to editing. Along with his writing and editing duties, as well as interviewing creative talent from time to time, he also oversees the assignment of movie-related features. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Journalism, and he’s been sourced numerous times on Wikipedia. He's aware he looks like Harry Potter and Clark Kent.
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