Lady Gaga and Todd Phillips bring 'Joker: Folie à Deux' to Venice | AP interview

the song I wrote for this movie uh is a waltz this voice uh that I found is Lee's voice and um it comes from her there are so many talented women that make music and uh and act and perform and I just I love seeing them all be celebrated by the world you've had two really special Venice Film Festival debuts now I mean can you do they do they feel similar or can you even compare them being at the Venice Film Festival is a huge honor and I just love movies so much and I love being in movies so the first time that I came here for a star as born I was just beside myself I had never experienced anything like it it was incredibly special in its own way uh but this time is even more special because I get to do uh another film and uh I get to tell a different story and it was it was a beautiful night last night and we're just really happy to be here I also love Italian people so being being in Venice makes me really happy um Harley Quinn is obviously such a pop culture icon and Lee is a very different sort of character did you try to immerse yourself in sort of the the lore of her or just focused on creating a new character here you know I I I definitely studied some of the lore of Harley Quinn and Lee uh my character was was certainly um inspired by many things that sort of uh have been in The Ether of this IP for a long time but I really wanted to create something new and I wanted it to be grounded in our script and this story and I was incredibly inspired by the first film that Todd made with Wen and the story of Arthur Fleck what happens to someone in society when they're repeatedly abused over and over again I wanted Lee to be very real and I wanted her Humanity to be unique to this film and grounded in a a storm that was inside of her I think that there's a particular kind of uh danger that she carries with her but it's it's inside and it's kind of explosive and building that was uh a kind of like beautiful process and I I worked really closely with Wen and uh and and also in approaching l in that way my singing voice changed because I had to sing coming from her and her character and her her you know her inner storm uh coming to life through music unlearning singing I think you said in the press conference I did yeah there's a was a lot of unlearning of singing I have you know I I've been a a trained singer for most of my life and I music is so like kind of just a part of who I am and I think you know I think when music is a is a part of who you are even if you're singing in the shower it kind of like comes out in this like very particular way and it could not happen that way in this movie so this this voice uh that I found is Lee's voice and um it comes from her and it's completely unique to who she is and you got to write a song and you also have new music coming on October it feels like a really big moment or a re-entry how are you sort of anticipating all of this thank you uh you know it's it's just it's just like a total honor to be able to be almost 20 years into my career and to still be able to make music that people want to hear and be in films that people want to go see and so I'm just really excited to be doing that and the the the song I wrote for this movie uh is a waltz and because uh this film is not a traditional uh musical by any stretch it's kind of just defies genre uh I actually wanted there to be a moment that was more traditional to uh theater uh so I I wrote This Waltz that that falls apart and that's that's very much our th and Le um there's also such a wonderful moment happening in with young women in pop music and queer women too and I just wonder you know just very briefly in our last minute if you might comment on you know what excites you about what's happening right now with with all of the new talent I just think seeing all the new talent in music is amazing and there are so many talented women that make music and uh and act and perform and I just I love seeing them all be celebrated by the world it's an exciting time to to be witnessing look around look at all these people you're back in Venice where it all started you had the premiere the standing ovation the reviews how are you feeling today I'm just overwhelmed by it all like always and um you know really excited and it was really exciting to come back here it felt like we had to not in a bad way but if they would have us it felt like the right thing to do do because of how much it meant to the last film starting here yeah you um have said that the first film you know was about empathy and sort of an expression of mental health and things like that what were you hoping to say with with the sequel um I think there's a lot going on in the sequel and I hate to tell people what to think but Underneath It All there's this an idea of corruption how everything is corrupt in the system in in from the prison system to the judicial system to the idea of ENT entertainment quite frankly this idea that in the states at least everything is entertainment you know a court trial could be entertainment and a presidential election can be entertainment so if that's true what is entertainment right so underneath the movie there's a little bit of that as well I mean outside of the obvious plot of what's going on the bandwagon reference some of those lyrics are very dark actually yes when you put yeah when you when you look at it through a different lens everything could be sort of dark it's true um you obviously employed Lady Gaga to to come on and take the role of Harley Quinn um what was it about her that made her right for the role and and also challenging her to do something like like not sing to her full yeah well that's an interesting thing you probably talk to her about but I mean I'll speak to it but but okay so obviously you know as we as Scott silver and I were writing the script we just kept leaning into music more than we even thought we would when we kind of had the idea um and so it was really important to me to find an actor that brought music with them you know that that this way could do a little bit of the math for the audience when you see it and you're go wait what it's a what oh well she's in it okay it makes it make a little more sense you know um the thing I was most surprised about Gaga is how quickly and how easily she also was able to bring vulnerability I thought she'd have a harder time with that quite frankly than she did I you know it it because while she's a great actor and a and a big-time actor she's also a huge Superstar and I wasn't sure she could channel that vulnerability as easy she did and that was the most kind of surprising thing about working with her yeah I mean her face just is so captivating camera I just yeah I know I've heard Walkin doesn't he likes to keep things fresh he doesn't like to do the same thing he doesn't like it to get stale I what sort of energy did she add to that Dynamic well she was gained for that 100% And and you know she was like okay you don't like to you like to keep it you like to keep it fresh let's sing live every time and he was of course intimidated at first to sing live cuz who the hell wants to sing in front of her live but he kind of quickly changed and it changed the whole making of the film because all of a sudden we were on set with a Pianist off camera because we were not only singing live We were singing live differently every take right so it was um it was really a trip to be on set on on days where there was music it was really wild sure I um you know youve talked a little bit about the bigger budget the bigger expectations obviously so many Oscar nominations walking and I mean what is what are you feeling is at stake here I mean nothing's at stake it's why we make movies I don't I don't think um there's not there's not much on the line outside of you know you hope people like a movie um and uh but this happens every time you make a movie there's always the pressure and but you're right um it's a lot easier I I said in the press conference you were there it's a lot easier being the Insurgent than the incumbent um you do feel like you have a larger Target on your back there's something really nice about making a movie uh the first film we were really under the radar as under the radar as a movie called Joker could be we were really under the radar until it came out this movie we had eyeballs on us from the day it was announced that we may be writing a script you know what I mean so you're right there's a different amount of pressure but uh that just comes with with making movies and I I have learned in my older age I took it a lot harder maybe to kind of look at it from 30,000 ft look at it from you know and and just have a different perspective on it because you can't please everybody and you just kind of go for it