'Joker 2' director says Joaquin Phoenix was 'sick every day' over nailing live songs with Lady Gaga (original) (raw)

Near the end of 2019’s Joker, helmer Todd Phillips' cinematic whirlwind of brutality, chaos, and trauma, the filmmaker directed star Joaquin Phoenix to stand atop the twisted wreckage of a car crash and slather a bloody smile across his face with his hand while Gotham City burned around him. In those final moments the audience shared with Arthur Fleck, Phillips realized he couldn’t shake his lingering, fuzzy affections for the same character who, earlier in the film, fired a bullet into a talk show host’s head — and, in a strange way, shot an arrow through Phillips’ heart, too.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Phillips tells Entertainment Weekly with a laugh, as he comes to terms with his longing for more time with the complicated, violent, anti-protagonist of Joker, whose story he and Phoenix teamed up to expand in the upcoming musical sequel Joker: Folie à Deux (in theaters Oct. 4).

“After the first Joker, Joaquin and I were really sad. Like, really sad. We didn’t want it to end,” Phillips says when asked why he felt compelled to make a second film inspired by (but ultimately bucking the traditions of) the DC Comics supervillain’s origin story. “Not only because we like working together, but because we didn’t want to leave Arthur. We loved Arthur and became attached to that character. Simply put, it was to spend more time with Arthur."

Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn and Joaquin Phoenix as Joker in 'Joker: Folie à Deux'.

Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros.

The way Phillips speaks about the future Batman evildoer brims with paternal grace, a willingness to understand and make space for the character’s plight. Many viewers couldn’t see beyond the heinous crimes he committed in the first film, which saw Arthur rebel against a social system that ostracized him, inadvertently spark a class war, and murder his own mother after coming to terms with the childhood abuse plaguing his adult life.

“He had issues. Clearly. But, there’s a light, a beauty, and a romance inside of him,” Phillips continues. “It was something Joaquin and I talked about early on; yes, he’s out of step with the world. However, there’s a romance inside of him, and there’s music inside of him.”

And, no, Phillips doesn’t just mean that metaphorically.

In Folie à Deux — a far more fantastical and notably tender film than the first — Phillips, Phoenix, and series newcomer Lady Gaga set Arthur on a musical journey after he finds romance with Lee Quinzel, a fellow patient at Arkham State Hospital who, under Arthur’s wing, embraces her own nefarious spirit as she evolves into the villainess better known as Harley Quinn. Still, near the top of the film, before the bombast begins, Arthur's hardened facade melts away when he first encounters Gaga's Lee, as she swoons at the thought of Arthur blowing a man’s brains out.

Yes, romance can be “kind of violent” emotionally, Phillips says, but equating romance with violence or brutality wasn’t the film’s thesis. An Arkham music therapist speaks the film’s core tenet at the outset, telling Lee and Arthur that “music heals the fractures within us.” Since nothing else seems to soothe Arthur, Phillips says he wanted to explore non-traditional methods of exposing the warmth he first saw within the character.

“What happens when a guy who hears music inside his head finds love for the first time in his life? Maybe the music that he hears inside his head starts coming out. Why wouldn’t that music come out when he meets somebody who gives him the time of day? His biggest issue in the first movie, outside of childhood trauma, was a severe lack of love,” Phillips explains, referencing Arthur’s musicality (see: dancing on the stairs, or backstage at the Murray Franklin Show) that comes to life in semi-lurid scenes of sonic psychosis. Arthur and Lee belt everything from a gospel-sized take on Sammy Davis Jr.’s “Gonna Build a Mountain” to a maniacally jubilant, disturbing rendition of Judy Garland’s “Get Happy,” mostly all in Arthur’s mind.

Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck in 'Joker: Folie à Deux'.

Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros.

There’s a method to that madness, both for Arthur and for Phillips. The director chose songs for Phoenix and Gaga to sing (which the pair performed live on set) with emotional intent — and he believes pop standards are what Arthur's mother "played around the apartment" when he was a kid.

“It’s not weird that he knows the lyrics to something like, ‘For Once in My Life,’” Phillips says of the classic song popularized via versions by Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, Gaga’s late collaborator, Tony Bennett, and even Frank Sinatra. “I don’t know if I believe it’s the first time Frank Sinatra found somebody who needs him. But, when Arthur sings it, it is. It’s a different meaning — and in some ways, it’s more emotional.”

Phoenix certainly felt those emotions on set with Gaga, Phillips recalls, particularly while shooting massively intimidating song-and-dance sequences (choreographed by Michael Arnold) with elaborate sets, tap-dancing numbers, and the aforementioned live vocals — all with the added pressure of the presence of Oscar- and 13-time Grammy-winner Gaga by his side.

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Phillips says Gaga “100 percent” gave Phoenix pointers on set, and that “he was sick every day” with nerves over those portions of production. The director says Phoenix had to sing with Gaga as early as nine days into the lengthy shoot, but the place the duo got to was magic to witness.

“The truth is, they gave each other pointers. He’d give her pointers about acting; she’s been in movies, but he’s Joaquin Phoenix. She gave him tips about music because she’s Lady Gaga. It’s what movies should be: a giant collaboration,” says Phillips, adding that Phoenix’s notes to Gaga were far less obvious, and sometimes expressed only through “being really generous” with his vulnerability in a scene, whereas “her notes would be a little more specific because it’s like, you’re not hitting the note there. It’s different. There’s less room for interpretation,” he finishes.

Phillips had to take a cue himself, though, while navigating fans’ obsession with classifying the genre of his latest work. Is it a full-on musical or not? The answer isn't really important, given that the film's world is one averse to happy endings of many different kinds, a notion that makes the colorful and tense nature of its furious, conflicting, often confrontational musical sequences such an inherently engrossing watch in the first place.

Todd Phillips directs Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix in 'Joker: Folie à Deux'.

Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros.

But, that's just life — and love — for someone like Arthur.

“I got a little heat for saying it’s not really a musical. I wasn’t saying that because I’m afraid of the term, ‘musical.’ I love musicals, and the movie definitely has music in it. It might even be a musical,” Phillips says. “To clarify, most of the times I’ve ever seen a musical, I walk out feeling better than I did when I walked in. On this movie, I’m not sure it’s the same thing. I wouldn’t want to be misleading and say you’re going to be whistling the songs from this movie on the way to your car after you see it."