Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix didn’t mind occasionally performing erratically. This is because, despite their intricate musical computation, the “Joker: Folie à Deux” stars were primarily focused on giving performances that felt genuine and authentic. Regarding a cover story on Todd Phillips, the creator of his film “Joker: Folie à Deux,” Phoenix stated to Variety, “It was important to me that we never perform the songs as one typically does in a musical. We didn’t want vibrato and perfect notes.” The two chose to “let the emotion guide it” and focused primarily on “being true to the moment.”
The movie is a follow-up to 2019’s $1 billion box office hit “Joker.” In the sequel, Phoenix returns to the role of Arthur Fleck, a prospective stand-up comedian who, while wearing a clown costume, killed talk show host Robert De Niro on broadcast television and is currently admitted to a mental health facility. A surge of followers, led by fellow patient Harleen “Lee” Quinzell (Gaga), better known as Harley Quinn in comic books, have been drawn to Arthur after his terrible act of violence.
Lee and a horde of disgruntled citizens of Gotham think Arthur’s alter persona, the Joker, is a kind of prophet. But when Arthur and Lee become enmeshed in a deranged duet, things truly start to get out of control. However, the movie isn’t a conventional musical; instead, many of the songs performed by Phoenix and Gaga’s characters are made up of their delusions. Gaga says, “Some of the music is fantasy, some of it’s in the scene. It breaks genre.”
Phillips interpreted the soundtrack, which features renditions of hits like “Get Happy,” “That’s Entertainment,” and “For Once in My Life,” as dialogue. “It’s just Arthur not having the words to say what he wants to say, so he sings them instead,” he states.
While working together, the participants would consider why their roles required singing as opposed to speaking. “We asked ourselves what would need to be true for two people to just break into song in the middle of a conversation?” Gaga says. “Where does the music come from when no one can hear it but the characters? Neither Arthur nor Lee are professional singers and they shouldn’t sound like they are (unless perhaps a fantasy). We wanted to help tell the story of their shared madness in a way that felt real. I think we all have an intimate and personal relationship with music in that there’s a score for our inner emotional lives. A score that no one can usually hear but us. That’s what we tried to capture for Arthur and Lee. The music inside them.”
Furthermore, an unconventional strategy was needed to bring forth the “music inside them.” Gaga and Phoenix executed everything live, backed by an off-camera pianist, rather than having them belt out a pre-recorded song. These takes were combined into one continuous number in the editing room and during post-production, and the actors subsequently recorded additional takes for some songs. Although Phillips refers to it as a “nightmare,” the process was laborious and vitally necessary.
“Particularly for Joaquin, so much of it is about feeling the moment as you do it,” Phillips said. “You can’t decide that in a sound studio three weeks before you show up to shoot it.”
Gaga and Phoenix both commend Phillips for having the courage to take chances. Phoenix describes him as “bold and enjoys when something new presents itself. He’s the best at solving problems spontaneously.”