Lady Gaga 'lived as' Patrizia Reggiani and spoke in Italian for nine months for 'House of Gucci' role
If you thought Lady Gaga was committed to her Oscar-nominated role of Ally in 2018's A Star Is Born, just wait.
The 35-year-old multi-hyphenate detailed her method process for embodying Patrizia Reggiani in Ridley Scott's forthcoming unauthorized biographical drama House of Gucci as the latest cover star of British Vogue.
"It is three years since I started working on [House of Gucci]," Gaga told the publication, "and I will be fully honest and transparent: I lived as [Reggiani] for a year and a half. And I spoke with an accent for nine months of that."
When asked, the 12-time Grammy winner confirmed that included her "off-camera" life. "I never broke," she said. "I stayed with her.
Gaga continued: "It was nearly impossible for me to speak in the accent as a blonde. I instantly had to dye my hair, and I started to live in a way whereby anything that I looked at, anything that I touched, I started to take notice of where and when I could see money. I started to take photographs as well. I have no evidence that Patrizia was a photographer, but I thought as an exercise, and finding her interests in life, that I would become a photographer, so I took my point-and-shoot camera everywhere that I went. I noticed that Patrizia loved beautiful things. If something wasn’t beautiful, I deleted it."
The superstar born Stefani Germanotta also noted that filming House of Gucci was "the experience of a lifetime ... because every minute of every day I thought of my ancestors in Italy, and what they had to do so that I could have a better life. I just wanted to make them proud."
House of Gucci follows the true events previously chronicled in Sara Gay Forden's 2000 book titled The House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour and Greed.
The film's official description reads, "House of Gucci is inspired by the shocking true story of the family empire behind the Italian fashion house of Gucci. Spanning three decades of love, betrayal, decadence, revenge, and ultimately murder, we see what a name means, what it’s worth, and how far a family will go for control."
Salma Hayek, Jeremy Irons, Jared Leto and Al Pacino also star.
Reggiani married Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver), the grandson of the iconic fashion brand's founder Guccio Gucci, in 1972 and embedding herself within the family empire before their relationship soured. She hired a hitman to murder Maurizio, by then her ex-husband, in March 1995 and was convicted in 1998. She was released from prison in 2016, after serving 18 years of her 26-year sentence.
Reggiani said in March (h/t E! News) that she is "rather annoyed at the fact that Lady Gaga is playing me in the new Ridley Scott film without having had the consideration and sensibility to come and meet me."
With British Vogue, Gaga addressed her decision to forego meeting with Reggiani, noting that she still is "not entirely sure" if she will ever want to meet the woman she dedicated years of her life to becoming on-screen:
"I only felt that I could truly do this story justice if I approached it with the eye of a curious woman who was interested in possessing a journalistic spirit so that I could read between the lines of what was happening in the film’s scenes. Meaning that nobody was going to tell me who Patrizia Gucci was. Not even Patrizia Gucci.”
House of Gucci hits theaters this Thanksgiving. Watch the latest trailer below.
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