“For me, it’s real,” Lady Gaga tells Sky News. “There are a lot of things that I’ve been through in my life, traumatic experiences, that I drew upon to play Patrizia.”
The star is talking about Patrizia Reggiani, the Italian socialite convicted of hiring a hitman to assassinate her ex-husband and fashion powerhouse Maurizio Gucci, whom she is playing in the new House Of Gucci film – currently making headlines as its stars attend premieres and promo events in an array of fabulous outfits around the world.
I’d waited to speak to her in a virtual waiting room on Zoom, two days after the UK premiere for the film. The star is running “a bit late” – 40 minutes – but when the reason is due to outfit changes, it’s hard to complain. This is Lady Gaga, after all.
When she does pop up on my screen, dressed in a pastel blue suit, off-camera she sounds tired but insists she’s happy to do the rounds with journalists to speak about the film, which is based on the true story of the family-run Gucci fashion empire. “I can’t wait for the world to see it,” she says. “We’ve had the worst 18 months, it’s time for the world to come together and watch movies!”
It’s been more than 10 years since Stefani Germanotta rose to fame as Lady Gaga and almost instantly cemented herself as one of the biggest – and most eccentrically-dressed – pop stars in the world, firing out hit after hit after hit; from Just Dance and Poker Face, to Paparazzi and Bad Romance, to Alejandro and Born This Way.
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Since then, she has proved there are even more strings to her bow, including her talents as an actress; in 2018, she won critical acclaim for A Star Is Born, giving a raw, emotional performance that saw her nominated for the Oscar for best actress (and winning the award for best original song) the following year.
When she speaks about House Of Gucci, though, in which she stars opposite Adam Driver, it’s clear that Reggiani is one of her most emotionally challenging roles to date. “I was so broken at the end,” she says. “I feel like I’m reliving the technique of the process of building this film every day when I speak to you about it.”
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Lady Gaga, of course, has a reputation for taking whatever she does very seriously (it takes some nerve to walk the red carpet in a meat dress, don’t you know?) and for House Of Gucci, she embraced method acting.
“I was in character for six months leading up to the film, and then for the three-and-a-half months that we filmed. I began with my accents, I would spend a lot of time talking to my family and everybody in my life to learn how to naturally speak with [the Italian] accent without it driving the acting.”
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Lady Gaga leads stars on House Of Gucci red carpet
Did that not drive your family a bit… mad? I ask tentatively.
She laughs: “I think my mom actually really liked it. She’s always embraced this artistic side of me, ever since I was a little girl. My father would laugh. I drove some people crazy, of course, but you know, I’m like a child with art and I love to immerse myself.”
So serious is Lady Gaga about this role that when I bring up being envious of her imagination, she’s keen to stress that what we see on screen isn’t fully acting. The singer, who has previously spoken out about being raped by a male music producer when she was 19, tells me she directed past trauma into making the role feel real.
“I think I’m just like everybody else really,” she says. “I’m imagining, sure. I’m creative, sure. But I think that being imaginative comes from a real place, it’s just how you choose to synthesise who you are.
“When I think about my real life experiences, there was a lot of things that I’ve been through in my life, traumatic experiences, that I drew upon to play Patrizia, and it’s not necessarily imaginative in that way. I mean I’m calling upon myself. Now, it might be imaginative to you, you might see it and say ‘oh that looks like it possesses imagination’, but for me it’s not imaginative, it’s real.”
Gaga says the film (which is set mostly in Italy) has made her reflect on her Italian-American roots and just how far she has come since the start of her career. “I’m really grateful… my family worked so hard on the soil where we filmed so that I could have a better life, and here I am starring in a Ridley Scott film,” she says.
Strip away the costumes and wigs and the singer certainly brings an equally gripping intensity to the filmmaker’s latest work.
“I felt so empowered as a woman on set with mostly men and I felt loved,” she says. “He’s an absolute legend and he’s masterful at what he does. His process is like an architect, he describes the script as the blueprint.”
And as for the fact that the script is based on true events…
She laughs: “To say that the Guccis were complicated would be a massive understatement. It’s amazing, you know, how you say things like, ‘you can’t make this up’. The truth about this whole story is you watch it and it’s actually unbelievable that it’s true.”
Reggiani, who is currently in prison, was convicted in 1998 of hiring a hitman to kill her husband.
“I have no interest in trying to make a case for why this should have happened,” Gaga says. “I don’t believe this should have happened, it’s reprehensible, it’s horrible… when this murder took place, I believe it happened because she was so traumatised, so hurt, that she made a terrible, awful mistake that she deeply regrets.”
Was the emotional exhaustion Lady Gaga suffered bringing Reggiani’s story to the screen worth it? Audiences will get to find out when House of Gucci comes out in cinemas on 26 November.
Hollywood celebrities are among thousands of people to have been evacuated from their homes as fires rip through areas of Los Angeles.
Sky News’ US correspondent Martha Kelner reported that Tom Hanks, Ben Affleck and Reese Witherspoon were all evacuated on Tuesday as wildfires continued to spread in the Pacific Palisades suburb of LA.
The area, which is home to billionaires as well as Hollywood A-listers, is located between Santa Monica and Malibu.
Other celebrities who have fled their homes include the award-winning actor James Woods, who said last night he had been safely evacuated from his home in Pacific Palisades.
But he added in a post on X: “I do not know at this moment if our home is still standing.”
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Actor Mark Hamill, best known for playing Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars films, also posted on social media last night saying he evacuated his home in Malibu and his family were “fleeing for our lives”.
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This Is Us actress Mandy Moore was also forced to leave her home due to the fires.
She said in two Instagram stories she had fled the Eaton fire, which is raging near Altadena, with her children, cats and dog. They have found temporary refuge with friends.
The actress said: “Trying to shield the kids from the immense sadness and worry I feel.
“Praying for everyone in our beautiful city. So gutted for the destruction and loss. Don’t know if our place made it.”
According to Velvet Ropes, which maps celebrity properties, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, Matt Damon, Steven Spielberg, Hilary Swank and Sally Field all have homes close to where fires are raging.
Dr Dre, Adam Brody and Leighton Meester, Tyra Banks, Martin Short, Anna Faris, Milo Ventimiglia, Linda Cardellini, Mary McDonnell, Adam Sandler, Miles Teller, and Jennifer Love Hewitt are also said to have houses in affected areas.
In neighbouring Malibu, which was also affected by fires in December, stars including Beyonce and Jay-Z, Kim Kardashian, Lady Gaga and Billie Eilish are said to be among the celebrity residents.
The Palisades blaze has already burnt through more than 11,000 acres of land while the Eaton one has caused the death of two people, Los Angeles County fire chief Anthony Marrone said on Wednesday.
The two other fires are known as Woodley and Hurst, after the main areas affected.
All four blazes are still growing, Mr Marrone said.
A reality TV personality known for appearing on shows like The Hills and Made In Chelsea has told Sky News her family have lost their homes in the California wildfires.
Stephanie Pratt, a model and the sister of fellow reality TV celebrity Spencer Pratt, lives in the Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles, where more than 30,000 people have fled their homes due to the fast-moving blaze.
Los Angeles fire chief Anthony Marrone said on Wednesday that the Palisades fire is still growing and that “well over 5,000 acres” have been burnt.
At least two people have been killed so far, with around 1,000 buildings destroyed.
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House surrounded by flames during wildfire
California governor Gavin Newsom earlier declared a state of emergency over the four wildfires in the south of the state.
Speaking to Sky News from London, an emotional Ms Pratt said: “It’s just so crazy, I had no idea what was happening.
“I talked to my dad yesterday and he said ‘The Palisades is burning’. He said that he was at my brother’s house on Chautauqua [Boulevard] and they were just watching the flames come.
“The firefighters came and said you got to leave.”
‘I don’t know if my house is there’
Ms Pratt said her parents and brother Spencer, who like her starred in the reality series The Hills, were safely evacuated from the area.
However, the 38-year-old added that “all of the phones are disconnected” and that she doesn’t know what had happened to her home.
“I talked to my neighbour last night and she told me that [Palisades Charter High School] had burnt down, and that’s directly behind me, and so had Gelson’s Supermarket which is adjacent,” she said.
“I just can’t reach anyone to see if my house is okay. I just Googled it and it said that it’s destroyed and terrible… I don’t know if my house is there.”
When she asked her dad about Spencer, 41, who is married to 38-year-old Heidi Montag – another co-star of The Hills – Ms Pratt said he told her “I’ve never seen him like this”.
“I’m assuming he’s just completely catatonic,” she added. “We don’t care about the material things or anything like that, but this was their family home.
“This is where they raised their two little kids.”
The Palisades fire is one of five blazes currently burning in southern California– evacuation orders were in place on Tuesday in Altadena after another fire, called the Eaton fire, started near a nature preserve.
A third blaze, called the Hurst fire, also ripped through Sylmar in the north of the city.
And according to the state department Cal Fire, two more blazes – the Woodley fire in Los Angeles and Tyler fire in Riverside – broke out on Wednesday.
Two School Of Rock co-stars, who met at the age of 10, have got married.
Caitlin Hale and Angelo Massagli, who played Marta and Frankie respectively in the 2003 classic alongside Jack Black, tied the knot in New York on Saturday.
The couple brought some of the original cast of the film, which centres on a pretend substitute teacher turning a group of musically gifted school children into a rock band, together to celebrate their nuptials.
Posting on Instagram, Hale, 33, shared various images of the day, including a photobooth picture with a handful of their former cast mates.
The former actress, who now works as a sonographer, wrote under the post: “Special thank you to everyone who contributed to an unforgettable day!”
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Rivkah Reyes, who played bass player Katie in the film, also posted about the wedding, sharing a video on TikTok.
The clip, set to Stevie Nicks’s Edge Of Seventeen, included cameos from Brian Falduto, who played Billy, Joey Gaydos Jr, who played Zack, and Aleisha Allen, who played Alicia, among others.
The use of the song was a nod to one of the scenes from the film where Black and Joan Cusack, who plays headteacher Rosalie Mullins, sing the song in a bar.
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“Celebrating the marriage of Caitlin & Angelo with my forever fam #schoolofrock #wedding,” Reyes wrote alongside the video, which showed them all dancing together.
After appearing together in the film the only contact Hale and Massagli had was through a WhatsApp chat set up with the entire cast, according to The New York Times.
The pair then both left show business and coincidentally reconnected while studying in schools in Florida.
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Massagli, 32, who now works as a lawyer for TikTok, according to The Times, told the paper the familiarity they both had due to working together when they were younger “cut through some of those early relationship hurdles”.