Joker: Folie a Deux star Lady Gaga and director Todd Phillips have revealed the film’s script would sometimes be ripped to shreds and restarted, even during filming.
In an interview with Vogue, Gaga, who plays Harleen Quinzel in the DC sequel alongside Joaquin Phoenix, who reprises his role as Arthur Fleck, said: “We’d very often meet in Joaquin’s trailer and sometimes we would just tear the script up and start all over. It was a really cool, liberating process.”
Phillips also discussed this process, which is common in filmmaking: “My line about Joaquin is that he’s the tunnel at the end of the light. You think, Okay, this scene works, let’s just go shoot it. And Joaquin’s like, ‘No, no, no, let’s just have a quick meeting about it,’ and it’s three hours later and you’re rewriting it on a napkin.
“What’s great about Lady Gaga is that she really holds her own both off camera when we’re in the trailer tearing things apart — which she probably spent the night before learning — but also on camera. It was not a small feat.”
IGN’s Joker: Folie a Deux review returned a 5/10. We said: “Despite the best efforts of Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, and an opening hour set in Arkham Asylum, Joker: Folie à Deux wastes its potential as a movie musical, a courtroom drama, and a sequel that has anything meaningful to say about or add to the first Joker.”
The Joker films are spin-offs seperate to James Gunn’s rebooted DC Universe, which kicks off this December with animated series Creature Commandos. Also seperate is Matt Reeves’ The Batman Universe, which he calls the ‘Batman Epic Crime Saga.’ Joker director Phillips has repeatedly cast doubt on the possibility of another movie based on the DC Comics villain after the release of Joker: Folie à Deux on October 4.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
