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Lady Gaga says 'playing a persona had a price,' confronts pain of early fame on 'Harlequin'

Lady Gaga tells EW of the toll 'playing a strung-out girl my whole career' took on her as she confronts past trauma on genre-defying, 'Joker'-inspired new album 'Harlequin.'

"I was moved by the fact that there was this mentioning of psychosis that would be related to my character, Lee, so in the music, it was important to me that I addressed what it means to descend into fantasy in your life," Gaga says, pointing to both the film's subtitle (translation: "madness for two") and one of Harlequin's original compositions, a haunting ballad titled "Happy Mistake." Now, as she prepares to hit the big screen as Lee, the love interest of Phoenix's Joker who initially bonds with him over her affinity for the heinous murders as outlined in the first film, she wrote the tune "Happy Mistake" as an acceptance of similarly brutal slices of her public life. Fans have affectionately dubbed it LG7 in place of an official title, and many have pointed to Gaga's usage of spooky emojis (from a monster to vampires and aliens) as well as her recent assertion at a jazz show in Vegas that she's about to go "to hell" as indications that The Fame Monster-era Darkga might be back in rotation.

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