Lady Gaga May Not Be Harley Quinn In ‘Joker 2: Folie à Deux’ According To Rumors
One of the most surprising hits of 2019 was Todd Phillips’s supervillain origin story, Joker. Starring Joaquin Phoenix, the film became the first R-rated movie to gross over a billion dollars, and, uniquely for a comic book movie and rare for a film in general, it scored eleven Oscar nominations including Best Picture, winning Best Original Score and Best Actor for Phoenix, making him the second actor to win an Oscar for portraying the Clown Prince of Crime, after Heath Ledger nabbed a posthumous win for 2008’s The Dark Knight. Even though the film would work pretty well as a standalone film, with the success it garnered, it’s no major shock that a sequel is on the way.
Details about the film are fairly scarce at the moment, with even the title, Joker: Folie à Deux (translation "Madness for Two") not being completely confirmed. What is known for certain is that Phoenix will be reprising his role as Arthur Fleck, AKA The Joker, with Todd Phillips returning to direct. Another interesting piece of information is that the film will also star another Oscar winner, Stefani Germanotta, better known by her stage name, Lady Gaga.
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Not too much has been leaked about the second film, which doesn’t even have a vague release date yet, but an insider did share a few details about what we might see whenever we get the second film, with a bit of it about Lady Gaga’s character.
“So the script has been floating around for the last few weeks among industry people and some of the people around me have read it -- here's what I 100% know is in the script -- Arthur Fleck (Joaquin) escapes prison/asylum and goes on a killing rampage before meeting Lady Gaga's character (who is NOT Harley Quinn. I don't know where the media got that from) who is extremely deranged as well... but in her own way. The dynamic between the two is not a straightforward romance. It's more of a Tom & Jerry type situation.”
It’s well known to people who aren’t even comic book fans that the main “love interest” (abused partner) for the Joker is the deranged former psychiatrist Harley Quinn. Harley rose to fame as a character on Batman: The Animated Series, and has gone on to appear in countless comics, got her TV show and movies, and was one of the few good things about Suicide Squad. If Lady Gaga was going to portray a love interest for Arthur Fleck, it would make some sense that it would be Harley.
However, if the leak is anything to go by, that’s not going to be the case.
Analyzing a bit, that line of thought also makes a bit of sense. The Joker is one of the most varied characters in all of the media, with each actor or creator putting their own, sometimes completely unique, spin on the character. Ledger’s Joker is very different from Romero’s Joker, who is different from Nicholson’s Joker, who is different from Leto’s Joker, who is different from Hamill’s Joker, and so on. Even with all of that said, Phoenix’s Joker still seems… even more different from the other ones. Up until the very end, the spirit that flows through each portrayal is missing. The closest approximation we could get between Arthur Fleck and another portrayal is the possible backstory given to him in The Killing Joke. The direction Phillips took with his version of the character… feels unique in a unique way if that makes any sense.
Leave it to the Joker to have so many unique portrayals that it’s hard to completely analyze and categorize them.
In any case, with that different direction, it isn’t completely out of the realm of possibility that Phillips wants to take the idea of a love interest in a completely different direction as well. The problem that he’s going to face, if indeed Lady Gaga doesn’t portray Harley, is creating a character that isn’t just Harley Quinn by another name. As the leak states, the relationship between the two isn’t strictly romantic, which does fit with a lot of portrayals of the two characters. In a lot of ways, Harley is just another victim of the Joker’s manipulations, and she’d kill the entire world if she thought it would finally cause her… “puddin’” to finally show her all the love she wants from him. If the character that Gaga is portraying goes down those roads, then it doesn’t matter what her name is in the script, people are still going to see her as Harley Quinn.
Overall, it’s far too early to tell anything. Sure the leak says that Gaga won’t be playing Harley, but that could be a trick so the audience doesn’t expect Harley, even though… they will anyway, no matter what anyone says. Ask the creators of Arkham Knight how well “no, we swear it’s not this character” went. There are thoughts that we could see the film as early as 2023. Either way, we’re not getting answers soon.
And just predicting, I don’t see the film scoring another dozen Oscar nominations with Gaga and Phoenix both taking acting Oscars home for their performances. Nothing against two highly talented actors who will probably have a juicy script to work with, but… call it a hunch.
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Sources(s): World of Reel