Lady Gaga Is Unbothered By The Joker: Folie à Deux Haters
"People just sometimes don't like some things."
Lady Gaga knows her latest cinematic venture didn’t exactly get the applause she lives for, and she’s OK with that. Nearly four months after Joker: Folie á Deux premiered, the superstar finally addressed the negative criticism that surrounded the musical sequel. Though the movie was poorly received, Gaga clarified that she’s fine with her projects not always landing with the general public.
“People just sometimes don't like some things,” Gaga said in a Jan. 28 Elle interview. “It’s that simple. 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.”
Gaga starred in the sequel to 2019’s Joker as Harley Quinzel, a reimagined version of the iconic sidekick and paramour of comic-book villain The Joker. As with all of her film roles, Gaga fully embraced the role in her other artistic endeavors, releasing her own album Harlequin inspired by the character.
Despite Gaga’s clear passion for Harley and the project as a whole, Joker: Folie á Deux was met with harsh reviews and struggled at the box office. But according to Gaga, fear of failure is much worse than actually failing.
“When that makes its way into your life, that can be hard to get control of,” she tells Elle. “It’s part of the mayhem.”
That word choice is deliberate. Gaga is now embarking on her next major artistic endeavor: her seventh studio album Mayhem. Though it already appears the new record shares some dark and twisted similarities to Joker: Folie á Deux, it’s actually much more of a return to form for the pop star, who’s alluded to the album as a resurrection of the Mother Monster persona that first made her a superstar in the early 2010s.
Even if her Joker era may have been a dark one, Gaga is clearly embracing that darkness and giving into the mayhem.
