Lady Gaga revealed in a new Rolling Stone cover story that her psyche was unraveling during the making of “A Star Is Born” and in the months afterward while on her “Joanne” world tour. As the pop icon bluntly admitted: “I did ‘A Star Is Born’ on lithium,” referring to the drug used to treat and prevent episodes of mania.
“There was one day that my sister said to me, ‘I don’t see my sister anymore,’ ” Gaga remembered. “And I canceled the tour. There was one day I went to the hospital for psychiatric care. I needed to take a break. I couldn’t do anything … I completely crashed. It was really scary. There was a time where I didn’t think I could get better.… I feel really lucky to be alive. I know that might sound dramatic, but we know how this can go.”
Gaga was in one of the busiest periods of her career during this time. “A Star Is Born,” in which Gaga played a rising pop star opposite Bradley Cooper as a fading country singer, started filming in April 2017. A few months earlier, Gaga headlined the Super Bowl Halftime Show after putting out her album, “Joanne,” in fall 2016. The tour of the same name kicked off in August 2017 after “A Star Is Born” filming wrapped and ran through February 2018. Gaga canceled the last 10 shows of the tour. “A Star Is Born” then rolled out in fall 2018, starting with a buzzy Venice Film Festival premiere. The film’s press tour lasted all the way through the Oscars in February 2019, where Gaga was nominated for best actress and won for best original song (“Shallow”).
Gaga largely credits her relationship to fiancé Michael Polansky with saving her mental health. The couple began dating in 2020. She explained: “Being in love with someone that cares about the real me made a very big difference.”
That love sustained Gaga through another tumultuous moment of her career: “Joker: Folie à Deux.” The sequel to the Oscar-winning “Joker” paired Joaquin Phoenix opposite Gaga’s Harley Quinn, but the reviews for the 2024 movie were disastrous. The box office was even worse. “Folie à Deux” flopped with just over $200 million worldwide, a huge decline from the $1 billion gross of the original. Gaga earned solid reviews for her performance, but the rest of the movie was torn apart by the press.
“I wasn’t, like, unfazed,” Gaga told Rolling Stone about her reaction to the film’s poor reception. “It’s funny, I’m almost nervous to share my reaction. But the truth is, when it first started happening, I started laughing. Because it was just getting so unhinged. When it takes a while for something to kind of dissipate, that can be a little bit more painful. Only because I put a lot of myself into it.”
Gaga channeled the negative reactions to the “Joker” sequel into her music, most notably the “Disease” music video. It was the first single off her new album “Mayhem,” which ended up returning Gaga to the heights of pop stardom. The album is currently nominated for album of the year at the Grammys.
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“There was a ton of negativity around ‘Joker.’ And I think I was feeling artistically rebellious at the time,” Gaga said. “I put so much of that energy into that video. I was in that place, you know, I was like, ‘I’ll show you who I am, and I’ll show you what this fight is like.’”
Head over to Rolling Stone’s website to read Gaga’s cover story in its entirety.
From Variety US