The Strangest And Most Batshit Things Lady Gaga Has Said About ‘House Of Gucci’
Channelling cats, speaking in an Italian accent for 18 months, searching for evidence of the Capitol Riots - it's been a wild ride on the promo trail.
Lady Gaga is nothing if not committed.
Throughout her career, Gaga has wholeheartedly thrown every part of herself into every creative project she has ever undertaken. She sat inside an egg (or, more specifically, a ‘vessel’, as she reverently notes in this video for Vogue) for 72 hours before the 2011 Grammys. She draped herself in raw meat in 2010, lathered herself in (thankfully, fake) blood for her 2009 VMAs performance of ‘Paparazzi’, and was vomited on by a performance artist in 2014 for SXSW.
During her whirlwind press tour for House Of Gucci, a decidedly camp re-telling of the dark, murderous history of the Gucci family, Gaga, in her own truly charismatic, disarming, and genuinely earnest way, has been breathlessly regaling journalists and fans with her personal experience of the making the film and the psychological, physical and at times spiritual lengths she went to accurately portray the starring role of Patrizia Reggiani.
The quotes from these interviews that have been pouring in via social media have been as delightfully, bewilderingly Gaga as ever. A Gaga promo interview is not your run-of-the-mill, A-list celebrity interview – instead of generic, curt junket answers, Gaga completely unravels; offering an intriguing insight into the way her artistic mind and process works. So let’s recap the best moments of her Gucci tour.
When She Revealed She Didn’t Break Character For 18 Months
“I will be fully honest and transparent: I lived as her [Reggiani] for a year and a half. And I spoke with an accent for nine months of that. Off camera, [too]. I never broke. I stayed with her.”
Oh, the accent. That beautiful accent. Is it Italian? Is it Eastern European? Does it simply not subscribe to any language origins whatsoever except those that exist only in Gaga’s mind? Endlessly memeified, gloriously camp, Gaga’s take on Patrizia Reggiani’s accent has been the talk of social media ever since the House of Gucci trailer dropped.
When it comes to her film roles, Gaga is well-known to subscribe to a method acting technique — and her dedication and commitment to this technique sees her living for months on end as her subject, changing her appearance, her speaking patterns, attempting to live in and see the world as her character. It’s a true testament to Gaga’s commitment to her work.
The fun of reading Gaga’s House of Gucci interviews is in imagining her actually living the scenarios she is describing; for a full year and a half, Gaga embraced, lived as, the murderous Patrizia Reggiani, her friends, family, boyfriend all left subject to Patrizia throughout Thanksgivings, Christmases, birthdays…Did Gaga’s plumber ever have to come by to fix the hot water only to be briefed on the job by an irate Patrizia Reggiani?
This #HouseOfGucci video has just reached 1M views on YouTube! (plus, 4.3M on TikTok and 1.2M on Instagram) pic.twitter.com/dISAGOn2qn
— Gaga Daily (@gagadaily) November 27, 2021
When She Revealed She “Channeled” A Cat
“Earlier in her life, I [channelled] a cat, like a house cat…In the middle of the film … I was a fox. And so I studied the way foxes hunt, and they’re actually quite playful when they hunt…And then I studied panthers for the end. I watched lots of videos about the way that panthers hunt…[they] seduce and then they pounce.”
Unfortunately when I read this quote, all I could think of was this video. Meow.
When She Simply Did Not Make Any Sense
“I drove by where Maurizio [Gucci] was shot … and I felt a pin drop in my stomach because I was so in my character, and I thought, ‘What have I done?’ We made art out of pain.”
There is so much to unpack here — in many ways, the question really is simply what is she on about — but I think my favourite part is that deliciously mixed metaphor of a pin dropping in Gaga’s stomach. No one knows what it means — but it’s provocative.
When She Said She Searched For Evidence Of The Capitol Riots
“I would have been a combat journalist. That was one of my dreams. When I was at the Capitol, the day before the inauguration, I remember walking around and looking for evidence of the insurrection.”
Gaga has clarified this quote in other interviews (below), explaining that by exploring the Capitol after the insurrection she was actually coming to terms with and confronting white supremacy in the US — but taken out of context and reposted countless times on social media, this quote has been one of the most popular, and most bewildering, of the House of Gucci promo campaign trail.
The mental image of Gaga snooping around the Capitol, perhaps with a comically oversized magnifying glass and one of those Sherlock Holmes hats, wiping a gloved finger across a window sill, dusting for prints, is truly hilarious — and honestly? Knowing what we know about Gaga’s ability to commit to a role/bit/outfit/performance art piece, it’s not completely unbelievable.
This was why. pic.twitter.com/dBhfomi9m6
— 葉❤️🔥 (@khoaleesi) November 3, 2021