Todd Phillips explains why a Joker: Folie à Deux scene with Lady Gaga‘s Harley Quinn kissing another woman didn’t make the final cut.
Paparazzi photos from the set of the Warner Bros. film in New York City from March 2023 featured the singer locking lips with a woman. The scene happens when Harley arrives at the courthouse to support Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck. As Harley walks up the courthouse steps, a heckler catches her attention and kisses her.
“It had dialogue in it, and, all of a sudden, I wanted it to be more of a music and vibe moment,” Phillips said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly about the improvised scene. “For that moment to have played, it needed dialogue behind it. Meaning, the woman said something, and then Gaga stopped and did this thing, and it just kind of got in the way of the moment.”
Gaga took on the role of Harley Quinn following many character iterations in animated versions and Margot Robbie’s take in the DC Extended Universe. Earlier this year, Phillips had teased how Gaga’s take on the character was different from previous versions.
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“While there are some things that people would find familiar in her, it’s really Gaga’s own interpretation, and Scott [Silver, co-writer] and I’s interpretation,” Phillips told Empire in an interview published in July. “She became the way how [Charles] Manson had girls that idolized him. The way that sometimes these [imprisoned murderers] have people that look up to them.”
Phillips continued, “There are things about Harley in the movie that were taken from the comic books, but we took it and molded it to the way we wanted it to be.”
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