Lady Gaga’s Harley Quinn inspired by Charles Manson’s followers

Lady Gaga‘s take on Harley Quinn in Joker: Folie à Deux has reportedly been inspired by Charles Manson’s followers – see what director Todd Phillips had to say below.

• READ MORE: ‘Joker’ review: a melancholic psychodrama punctuated by splashes of shocking violence

Speaking to Empire Magazine, Phillips opened up about Gaga’s approach to the character. Margot Robbie previously played the character in 2016’s Suicide Squad, as well as her own spin-off Birds of Prey and the 2021 reboot The Suicide Squad.

Gaga’s version of Harley Quinn will be a decidedly different take on the character. Phillips said: “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.”

He went on to explain: “She became the way how [Charles] Manson had girls that idolised him. The way that sometimes these [imprisoned murderers] have people that look up to them. There are things about Harley in the movie that were taken from the comic books, but we took it and moulded it to the way we wanted it to be.”

Elsewhere in the chat with Empire, Gaga also explained how she had to change her singing voice to play the character. “People know me by my stage name, Lady Gaga, right? That’s me as that performer, but that is not what this movie is; I’m playing a character,” she said.

“So I worked a lot on the way that I sang to come from Lee and to not come from me as a performer.”

Joker: Folie à Deux sees Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck/Joker meet music therapist while he’s incarcerated at Arkham State Hospital. The two fall in love and, after Fleck’s release, embark on a doomed romantic misadventure.

Earlier this month, Folie à Deux’s casting director Francine Maisler said that Gaga’s Harley will “blow your mind”, adding that she was “really surprised” that singer was able to keep pace with Phoenix during the shooting of the film.