Lady Gaga's fiancé met Harley Quinn thanks to her preparation for the Joker sequel

When Lady Gaga sang “The Joker Is Me” on her new companion album harlequinshe may have discussed her personal life with her fiancé Michael Polansky.

After diving so deeply into her role as Patrizia Reggiani in 2021 House of Gucci The 38-year-old Oscar winner says that she needed a psychiatric nurse on set Weekly entertainment that she similarly inhabited the mind of DC Comics villain Harley Quinn as she prepared to star opposite Joaquin Phoenix in Todd Phillips' film Todd Phillips. Joker: Folie à Deux.

“I wasn't done with this character when I finished shooting the film. Her creation had a profound effect on me. “Because of the way I prepare for things, Michael also got to know Lee pretty well, and that's why we came up with this project together,” Gaga explains the inspiration behind it harlequina collection of reimagined covers (plus two originals) of classic songs that she and Phoenix sing in the film. “We wanted to do something to celebrate the complexity of a woman who carries danger within her but at the same time carries a sense of sweetness and cannot be defined. The way you can't define Lee in the film, you can't define her in this album, through genres.

Gaga praises Polansky, who served as a songwriter on the project, for his “tremendous creativity” and calls him “closer to me artistically than most people” in their lives.

“I think it's a beautiful thing when you can share an artistic experience with your partner, which might be difficult for some people, but Michael understands me so well that it actually led to this record,” she says. “If anything, his understanding of Lee in our everyday lives and through the making of the film helped him become an incredible collaborator. He was always working on how can we drive the sound so that it sonically tells their story in a way that's “vibrant, but also tense, dangerous, and also pure?”

Gaga and Polansky's engagement was accidentally revealed by French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal at the 2024 Paris Olympics, where Gaga performed a cover of Zizi Jeanmaire's “Mon Truc En Plumes” at the opening ceremony. In a video shared on Attal's TikTok page in July, Gaga can be heard introducing Polansky as her fiancé – news the couple has not yet officially announced.

Harlequin, The duo's first official musical collaboration accompanies the release of the highly anticipated album joker Consequence. The film follows Phoenix-based Joker/Arthur Fleck as he finds love with a fellow patient, Lee (Gaga), at Arkham State Hospital. The film then follows their romance — and Arthur's subsequent trial for the crimes he committed in the 2019 film — through a series of imaginary, trippy musical sequences featuring covers of the songs that Gaga and Polansky reworked as solo numbers harlequin.

In a separate interview, Phillips tells EW that Gaga gave Phoenix “100 percent” guidance on filming the elaborate sequences, including choreographed sections that included on-set singing, dancing and more. Phoenix is ​​“sick every day” from nervousness, the director adds.

“The truth is that they gave each other clues. He would give her tips on acting; She has appeared in films, but he has Joaquin Phoenix. She gave him tips about music because she is Lady Gaga. That’s how movies should be: a huge collaboration,” Phillips explains. The director notes that Phoenix's feedback for Gaga was less obvious, sometimes expressed simply by him being “really generous” with his reactions in a scene, whereas “her notes would be a little more specific, because it's as if.” you don’t hit the right note.” There. It's different. There is less room for interpretation.

Joker: Folie à Deux hits theaters on Friday.