Lady Gaga had plenty of inspiration for her upcoming album Harlequin.
The Academy Award winner opened up about the “deep experience” she had playing Harleen ‘Lee’ Quinzel (aka Harley Quinn) in Joker: Folie à Deux, explaining how her portrayal of the DC comic book character sparked the companion album.
“This idea of dual identities was always something that was a part of my music making,” she told Apple Music‘s Zane Lowe. “I was always creating characters in my music and when I made Lee for Joker, she just really had this profound effect on me. The film had so much music in it, so much music that I love, and I was able to discover the character through the story, through the music that we did live every day as well as dance and the costumes and the makeup. So I kind of had this deep experience with the character and she just didn’t really leave me creatively and I decided I wanted to make a whole album inspired by her.”
In Todd Phillips‘ musical sequel to his Oscar-winning 2019 film Joker, premiering Oct. 4 in US theaters, Joaquin Phoenix reprises his role as the titular villain Arthur Fleck, now a patient at Arkham State Hospital, where he falls in love with fellow patient Lee. As the pair’s romance blossoms through inner musical numbers, Fleck’s loyal followers rise up to break him out.
Gaga explained of the role, “She’s a really complex woman and I think, particularly as a woman in music and a female producer, it was really fun to go, ‘This album will be and I will be what I want, when I decide, whenever I feel like it. If I want it to be blues, it’ll be blues. If I want it to be funk, it’ll be funk. If I want it to be soul, it’ll be soul.’”
Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix in Joker: Folie à Deux.
Warner Bros. / DC Studios
“It was all in the image of the character, but also kind of at the very core of her soul, which is really just me,” said Gaga. “Every character I play, it just has me as the gravity. I am wrestling, on that record, with a lot of feelings about so much that I’ve been through as an artist, everything I went through growing up in the public eye, and the industry since I was a teenager.”
Gaga recently announced that Harlequin will drop Friday, ahead of Joker: Folie à Deux‘s premiere. Meanwhile, fans are patiently awaiting her next album LG7, the first single of which is expected in October.