Culture
Lady Gaga’s House of Gucci Press Tour Deserves An Oscar
The performance of a lifetime.
Not only did Gaga give an impressive performance as Patrizia Reggiani, the infamous wife of Maurizio Gucci in Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci, but she gave just as inspired a performance as a Star On A Press Tour, a role for which she’s already won the Oscar many times over. The House of Gucci press tour got more bonkers by the week — ultimately culminating in what feels like a master class in camp. Read on for all the ridiculous things Gaga said on her House of Gucci press tour.
Gaga lived as Patrizia for 18 months
Gaga famously committed to the role for a year and a half of her life, playing the role of the Very Serious Actor, dyeing her blonde hair brown and speaking in an Italian accent, even around her friends and family, on and off-camera. “I will be fully honest and transparent: I lived as [my character] for a year and a half,” she said. “I never broke. I stayed with her.”
She wrote an 80-page biography of Patrizia Gucci
“I wrote like an 80-page biography about her myself,” Gaga said of her preparation for her role. “And it was something that I worked off of and I read all the time to just get the story, her backstory, inside of me.” A totally normal thing to do!
Gaga had an on-set psychiatric nurse
“I had a psychiatric nurse with me towards the end of filming,” Gaga told Variety, explaining, “I sort of felt like I had to. I felt that it was safer for me.” She went on to say that she wasn’t sharing that to “glorify” her commitment to acting, but talked about her sometimes complicated “romantic relationship with suffering for your art.”
Gaga worried that Patrizia was going to show up
“I wondered all the time when I was in Italy if [Patrizia] was going to show up,” she told Variety. “I mean, she’s out of jail. There was a safety element.” On-set security probably could have handled it if 73-year-old Patrizia showed up, but she never did. Gaga did later claim she put a curse on her (more details on this later), which is arguably much worse!
Gaga said filmmakers feared for her safety
In an interview with Jake Gyllenhaal for Variety’s Actors on Actors series, Gaga explained how the filmmakers feared for her safety. "When I did the bathtub scene, when I went under, they had to yell, 'Cut,' because they were like, 'Get her out of there!' I was fine. I can hold my breath for a long time. I’m a singer," she said. Gaga could probably benefit holistically form coming up for air a little more.
Gaga couldn’t distinguish between real-life and a set
“I had some psychological difficulty at one point towards the end of filming. I was either in my hotel room, living and speaking as Reggiani, or I was on set, living and speaking as her,” she said. “I remember I went out into Italy one day with a hat on to take a walk. I hadn’t taken a walk in about two months and I panicked. I thought I was on a movie set.”
Gaga pretended to get inebriated off prop drinks
During Variety’s “Actors on Actors” event, Gaga asked her esteemed peers about their stance on prop drinks. “Do you ever drink the prop drinks and actually feel dr*nk, even though they’re not real? I do,” she admitted. She was met with not only a deafening silence, but also a perplexed “Hmmm...” from Kirsten Dunst that is still reverberating to this day.
Gaga said Patrizia Gucci put a curse on her
This is where Gaga truly lost the plot. “On the last day of filming, I was on the balcony of my apartment in Rome, and I was blasting Dean Martin singing ‘Mambo Italiano’, and I had a cigarette hanging out of my mouth. I was Patrizia,” Gaga said of her final day on set. “But I knew I had to say goodbye to her: Large swarms of flies kept following me around, and I truly began to believe that she had sent them. I was ready to let her go.” Sure, Patrizia was reportedly “annoyed” that Gaga didn’t meet her, and yes, she and Maurizio may have been “viciously superstitious,” but why would she wait until Gaga’s last day on set?