Lady Gaga responded to the onslaught of negative “Joker: Folie à Deux” reviews in a new interview, saying you cannot impress everyone.
“People just sometimes do n0t like some things. It’s that simple,” Gaga told Elle in an interview published Tuesday. “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 did not connect in the way that you intended.”
“Joker: Folie à Deux,” the sequel to Todd Phillips’ critically acclaimed “Joker,” premiered for the first time globally at the Venice Film Festival back in September 2024. The second time around, the movie was turned into a musical that told the early beginnings of Joker and Harleen “Lee” Quinzel, whom Gaga played.
While highly anticipated, the sequel garnered mixed reviews. Some were upset over it being converted into a musical while others just flat-out thought it was bad.
“The emergency axe thus came out, and despite everything, Phillips & Co. smashed back into the self-contained world, shook all the contents out on to the carpet and, against their own advice, had another go,” The Times’ Kevin Maher previously wrote of the film. “The result? Messy, lifeless, derivative and exactly what you would expect from a film that simply does not want, or need, to exist.”
In addition, Rotten Tomatoes gave the movie a 31% rating and the 2025 Razzie Awards called it one of the “worst” movies from 2024.
Nevertheless, Gaga said hits and misses among fans comes with creating art, and she will not be internalizing it.
“When that makes its way into your life, that can be hard to get control of. It is part of the mayhem,” Gaga said. But the Grammy and Oscar-winning artist has many more projects in store, including her upcoming album, “Mayhem,” which drops March 7.
She said the album will be a mix of sounds and genres that have a “happy apocalyptic tune” while some of songs will have “’90s alternative, electro-grunge, Prince and Bowie melodies, guitar and attitude, funky bass lines, French electronic dance, and analog synths.” To put it simply, Gaga said, “‘Mayhem is utter chaos!”
