Joker 2 Director Todd Phillips Had A Direct Connection To Cast Lady Gaga As Harley Quinn

"Joker: Folie á Deux" — the highly-anticipated sequel to Todd Phillips' first "Joker" film that drew totally chaotic reactions when it premiered at the Venice Film Festival — features Lady Gaga's first turn as the legendary DC Comics character Harleen Quinzel. So, how did the pop star and actor get involved with Phillips' project in the first place? It all has to do with Bradley Cooper.

/Film's own Bill Bria attended a Q&A with Phillips and screenwriter Scott Silver before a screening of "Joker: Folie á Deux" and learned that Phillips, who produced Cooper's directorial debut "A Star is Born," knows Lady Gaga (who plays the titular "birthed star" Ally in the film alongside Cooper's fading musician Jackson Maine). "Well, I was lucky enough to know her because I was a producer on Bradley's movie, 'A Star is Born,'" Phillips clarified. (Phillips and Cooper have been working together since 2009 when Cooper starred in the director's now-legendary comedy "The Hangover.")

"So, it wasn't impossible to kind of send her a text and say, 'Scott and I've been working on this thing,'" Phillips continued before saying that the "Bad Romance" singer kept popping into his head as he wrote the sequel. "I'll say this, the first movie we wrote for Joaquin Phoenix, we started writing this not knowing who that character would be, but the more we kind of fell into this, quite frankly musical aspect of the film, the more she kept popping up in my head. And I remember I said, I said, 'What do think about...'"

The two went back and forth over the idea of casting Lady Gaga and wondering if they were "crazy" to even imagine it, but when Phillips officially said her name, Silver remembered agreeing wholeheartedly: "And I'm like, "Oh my God. It's perfect."

As a producer on "A Star is Born," Todd Phillips did work a little bit with Lady Gaga on the film that ultimately earned her an Academy Award (for the original song "Shallow," a searing duet she sings with Bradley Cooper). However, Phillips stressed that he wanted the singer-songwriter to feel completely comfortable saying yes or no when it came to "Joker: Folie á Deux."

"So then it was not, I mean, she had to make the decision," Phillips clarified. "You'd have to ask her how hard it was to make decision, but for us, it was, once I came to him with it, I was like, 'What do you think?' And then we were just all on board." Certainly, it helped that Phillips and Gaga knew each other before he asked, as he noted: "But luckily I had met her and worked with her. I mean, that's Bradley's movie, but I worked with her a little bit. Knew her at least. And so it wasn't that out of place."

Ultimately, Todd Phillips said that he and star Joaquin Phoenix — who returned to play Arthur Fleck, the titular Joker, after winning an Academy Award in 2020 for the first movie — personally met with Lady Gaga, and he recalled that he was struck by her intensity and that the meeting was immensely helpful for both him and Phoenix.

"And then Joaquin and I... I remember we went out to Malibu where she was, and we had a meeting with her and we talked to her," the director said. "It was really kind of amazing. I mean, it's weird with people with like that because I've worked with big actors. I worked with Robert Downey, Jr., and he's as big as it gets, but there's something about somebody like Lady Gaga. It's on a different level than an actor." 

"I don't know. I can't explain it," Phillips concluded, though he also said it didn't feel like artifice or make him feel as if she would be "too much" to have on set. "So, you do feel it when you're with them, but the amazing thing about her is she just strips that all away pretty quickly, and suddenly she's just another actor in the movie. And I thought that really was helpful for me, but also for Joaquin," he added.

Only select critics have had the chance to see exactly how Lady Gaga handles Harley Quinn in "Joker: Folie á Deux," but based on what both Todd Phillips and the "Chromatica" singer told Empire Magazine in July of this year, she's going to play an extremely fascinating version of this familiar character. Phillips, for his part, said that he and Lady Gaga discussed how Arthur's admirer-turned-lover would be just as magnetic as the Joker himself and even compared her to a sinister real-life figure. ""She became the way how [Charles] Manson had girls that idolized him," Phillips told the outlet. "The way that sometimes these [imprisoned murderers] have people that look up to them."

As for Lady Gaga herself — whose real, full name is Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta — she reminded audiences that even if they think they know how she'll play Harley, she can still surprise them. "People know me by my stage name, Lady Gaga, right? That's me as that performer, but that is not what this movie is; I'm playing a character," the Grammy winner clarified. "So I worked a lot on the way that I sang to come from Lee, and to not come from me as a performer." 

Lady Gaga went on to reveal that, as the character she fondly calls "Lee," she hits "plenty of bum notes" and worked to transform her singing voice to be less professional and controlled. "So it's like removing the technicality of the whole thing, removing my perceived art-form from it all and completely being inside of who she is," she said in the interview. Thankfully, fans won't have to wait forever to see Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn. "Joker: Folie á Deux" hits theaters on October 4, 2024.