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LADY GAGA IS READY TO BE CROWNED QUINN…

With A Star Is Born, Lady Gaga took a familiar role and owned it. If rumours deliver, she seems set to try a similar trick in the musical sequel to one of 2019’s hottest talking points. As we go to press, Gaga is reportedly under consideration to join director Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie À Deux as Harley Quinn, a role made to measure like the finest cuts-of-meat dress.

A chameleonic pop firework with a taste for the theatrical, the New York-born Stefani Germanotta has previous with the kinds of fashion statements and wily moves Quinn might approve of. She has a show-stopper of a voice, too; put it alongside music from Oscar-winning Joker composer Hildur Guðnadóttir (presumably returning, please) and there may be more smiles on awards night. And while Joker stoked controversy for its supposed incel appeal, Gaga might just mobilise a wider fanbase. Can we start calling them Harley’s little monsters?

One more thing: boy, can she act. Gaga brought great presence and range to A Star Is Born’s Ally, commanding the screen whether dressed down on the pavement, slaying festival crowds with that blast-off ‘Shallow’ moment or holding the heart-rending closing shot. If the Oscar for Best Original Song was a shoo-in, a Best Actress win would have been equally welcome.

Previously, she was suitably witchy and vampiric in American Horror Story’s Roanoke and Hotel arcs. And she played to her slippery skill-set extravagantly as a masked assassin in Machete Kills; wielding guns and trashing vehicles, Gaga took to the OTT occasion with tangible commitment.

Though the material differed, her performance as socialite Patrizia Reggiani in Ridley Scott’s House Of Gucci gave those unfiltered instincts fresh focus. She went total Method for Reggiani, drawing on personal trauma and her years at the Lee Strasberg Institute – she wanted to act before becoming a singer – to deliver a performance of controlled, fully felt excess as the righteous woman scorned. “I bled humanity into this character in every cell of my being,” she said. In short, she would make a killer Quinn. Gotham won’t know what hit it.

JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX IS CURRENTLY IN PRE-PRODUCTION.