Harley Quinn star Lady Gaga has responded to the Joker: Folie à Deux backlash in a new interview with Rolling Stone, and her initial reaction was suitably in character.
Gaga played a different version of Harley Quinn in the film, named Lee Quinzel, who was a patient at Arkham along with Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker. Critics and audiences were unkind to the movie, which stalled out with a box office gross of just over $200 million, after the first movie made over a billion dollars and was nominated for multiple Oscars (Phoenix won Best Actor).
“I wasn’t, like, unfazed,” Gaga told Rolling Stone. “It’s funny, I’m almost nervous to share my reaction. But the truth is, when it first started happening, I started laughing. Because it was just getting so unhinged.”
While that’s a suitably Harley Quinn-style response, it wasn’t all fun and games. “When it takes a while for something to kind of dissipate, that can be a little bit more painful. Only because I put a lot of myself into it,” Gaga added.
Of course, Gaga is both an actor and a pop star, and it turns out Joker 2 didn’t only inspire a concept album of jazz music but also the music video for ‘Disease,’ her single released in 2024. “There was a ton of negativity around Joker,” she explained. “And I think I was feeling artistically rebellious at the time.”
The video itself is very intense, beginning with Gaga lying presumably dead across the hood of a car (being driven by her own dark alter-ego), while the rest of the video involves versions of Gaga battling herself and being chased. “I put so much of that energy into that video,” she added. “I was in that place, you know, I was like, ‘I’ll show you who I am, and I’ll show you what this fight is like.'”
This isn’t the first time Gaga has addressed the backlash. “People just sometimes don’t like some things. It’s that simple,” she said earlier this year. “And I think to be an artist, you have to be willing for people to sometimes not like it. And you keep going even if something didn’t connect in the way that you intended.”
While the Joker movies are Elseworlds projects, DCU: Chapter One continues next year with Supergirl, Lanterns, and Clayface. While you wait, fill out your watchlist with our guide to all the upcoming DC movies and shows.
