Lady Gaga breaks silence on ‘Joker 2' flop: 'People just sometimes don’t like some things'

With a new album on the horizon, pop star Lady Gaga is opening up on why she thinks Joker: Folie à Deux was a massive critical and box office flop.

After the 2019 original was nominated for 11 Oscars and landed Joaquin Phoenix a Best Actor Academy Award for his portrayal of the titular Batman villain, a sequel was greenlit with Gaga tapped to play Harley Quinn in the follow-up.

But the entry was panned by critics and audiences alike. On Rotten Tomatoes, the title currently holds a 31% score. At this year’s Golden Raspberry Awards, it received a leading seven nominations, including Worst Picture and Worst Actress for Gaga.

“People just sometimes don’t like some things,” Gaga explained in a new interview with Elle. “It’s that simple. And I think to be an artist, you have to be willing for people to sometimes not like it. And you keep going even if something didn’t connect in the way that you intended.”

She added that worrying about failure and whether an audience will like an artistic venture she’s interested in rarely enters her mind.

“When that makes its way into your life, that can be hard to get control of. It’s part of the mayhem,” she said.

Gaga made her remarks as she gets ready to rev up the publicity machine for her seventh studio album, Mayhem.

The 14-track LP follows last year’s Harlequin, a companion album she released for Joker: Folie a Deux that barely cracked the top 20 on the Billboard 200.

According to a press release, Mayhem will explore “themes of chaos and transformation.”

With a $1.1 billion box office gross, at one point the original Joker was the highest grossing R-rated movie of all-time before it was surpassed by Marvel Studios’ Deadpool & Wolverine.

Last fall’s sequel grossed $206.4 million on a reported $190 million production cost.

In an interview with Postmedia, co-writer and director Todd Phillips said he returned for the musical sequel because he and Phoenix “loved the character so much.”

He said he cast Gaga because he thought she would make an “interesting” compliment to Phoenix.

“It just felt like we should find an actress that brings music with them. That’s the best way to describe it,” he said.

For his part, Phoenix said it was “ f—ing intimidating” working with Gaga.

“I hate those cliches of saying someone’s normal. But she is. That’s the best way to describe her,” Phoenix said. “I never felt like there was this superstar there that would be judging me. It was more like a partnership.”

After the film hit theatres last October, one of the film’s actors slammed Folie à Deux declaring the movie had “no plot.”

“We would sit there, me and these other guys were all dressed in these security outfits because we’re working at the Arkham Asylum, and I would turn to one of them and we’d hear this crap and I’d go, ‘What the f— is this?’ And they’d go, ‘This is going to bomb, man.’ I go, ‘This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen,’” Comedian Tim Dillon said during an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast. “We were talking about it at lunch, and we’d go, ‘What is the plot? Is there a plot? I don’t know, I think he falls in love with her in the prison?’ It’s not even hate-watchable. That’s how terrible it is.”

But the movie had at least one high-profile supporter: filmmaker Quentin Tarantino.

During a recent interview on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast,?the Oscar-winning director said Phoenix gave “one of the best performances I’ve ever seen in my life.”

He also praised Phillips, calling him “the Joker” incarnate for making a sequel that risked upsetting the legions of fans who watched the original in theatres.

“The entire concept, even him spending the studio’s money — he’s spending it like the Joker would spend it, all right? And then his big surprise gift — haha! — the jack-in-the-box, when he offers you his hand for a handshake and you get a buzzer with 10,000 volts shooting you — is the comic book geeks. He’s saying f— you to all of them. He’s saying f— you to the movie audience. He’s saying f— you to Hollywood. He’s saying f— you to anybody who owns any stock at DC and Warner Brothers … Todd Phillips is the Joker.”

mdaniell@postmedia.com