Ahead of her next major movie role in House of Gucci this fall, Lady Gaga is opening up about getting into character as Patrizia Reggiani, the ex-wife of designer Maurizio Gucci, who hired a hitman to kill him in 1995.
The Oscar-winner tells The Wall Street Journal it was important for her to authentically play the part. She spent six months perfecting an Italian accent and then stayed in the accent for the entire shoot.
“I knew I was about to play a murderer,” she says. “I also knew how Tony [Bennett] feels about Italians being represented in film in terms of crime. I wanted to make a real person out of Patrizia, not a caricature.”
“I felt the best way to honor Maurizio and Italians was for my performance to be authentic, from the perspective of a woman,” Gaga adds. “Not an Italian-American woman, but an Italian woman.”
She says working on a film set in Italy also brought her closer to her roots. “When I went over to film this year, every day I was able to plant my feet on the ground and know that I was in a place where my family lived before coming here and working hard so I could have a better life,” Gaga says.
House of Gucci hits theaters November 24. Gaga’s new duets album with Tony Bennett, Love for Sale, is out today.
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