Lady Gaga Says ‘Joker’ Character Had a ‘Profound Effect’ on Her When Making ‘Harlequin’: ‘She Didn’t Really Leave Me Creatively’

Lady Gaga wasn’t quite ready to let her Joker: Folie à Deux character go, so she created an accompanying 13-track album titled Harlequin.

Joker: Folie à Deux follows Phoenix’s return as Arthur Fleck, a.k.a the Joker, who is now confined in Arkham Asylum. There, he meets Gaga’s Harleen “Lee” Quinzel, and they form a powerfully chaotic bond with the goal of causing mayhem across Gotham City. Unlike the first Joker film, the sequel includes a series of musical numbers, which is where fans see Gaga in her element.

“This idea of dual identities was always something that was a part of my music making,” Gaga shared in a new interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe of the inspiration behind Harlequin. “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.”

She continued, “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.’”

The project features covers of old classics — including reimagined showtunes like “Good Morning” (Singing in the Rain) and “If My Friends Could See Me Now” (Sweet Charity) — and “celebrates a figure who thrives on danger, who lives for the undefinable, and who embraces the beautiful chaos of her own dreams,” per a press release. Harlequin also features two original songs, the dramatic waltz “Folie à Deux” and the acoustic ballad “Happy Mistake.”

“BloodPop and I had written this together and then I kind of took it to the next place,” she said of “Happy Mistake,” before adding, “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. 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.”

Ultimately, Gaga says filming the Joker film with Phoenix was a “really soulful experience” for her. “It’s like these two people find love in this really dark place and it brings them all the light,” she explained.

Watch Zane Lowe’s full interview with Lady Gaga below. Joker: Folie à Deux hits theaters on Oct. 4.

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