Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix Sang Live in ‘Joker 2’: It Was a ‘Nightmare’ to Edit

In Joker: Folie à Deux , Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix took a different approach to creating the musical’s tracks while filming. In a new interview with Variety , the pair and filmmaker Todd Phillips discussed the complicated approach they took to shooting the musical scenes in the film, revealing that both Gaga and Phoenix decided to sing live rather than sing along to a pre-recorded track while filming.

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“It was important to me that we never perform the songs as one typically does in a musical,” Phoenix said. “We didn’t want vibrato and perfect notes.”

Several takes were mashed together into one cohesive song, which filmmaker Todd Phillips called a “nightmare” to edit — but admitted that it was integral to the musical process.

“Particularly for Joaquin, so much of it is about feeling the moment as you do it,” Phillips said. “You can’t decide that in a sound studio three weeks before you show up to shoot it.”

Gaga further explained that the film breaks the mold of the typical musical genre, with many of the ballads existing in the Joker’s and Harley’s minds. Songs like “Get Happy,” “That’s Entertainment,” and “For Once in My Life” act as dialogue in the film.

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“We asked ourselves what would need to be true for two people to just break into song in the middle of a conversation?” Gaga said. “Where does the music come from when no one can hear it but the characters? Neither Arthur nor Lee are professional singers, and they shouldn’t sound like they are (unless perhaps a fantasy). We wanted to help tell the story of their shared madness in a way that felt real. I think we all have an intimate and personal relationship with music in that there’s a score for our inner emotional lives. A score that no one can usually hear but us. That’s what we tried to capture for Arthur and Lee. The music inside them.”

Joker: Folie à Deux takes place two years after the original, as Arthur, or the Joker (Phoenix), sits in a psych ward awaiting the death penalty following the vicious murder of a talk show host. There, he meets fellow patient Harleen “Lee” Quinzel or Harley Quinn (Gaga).

The musical heads to theaters Oct. 4.

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