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Joker 2 director Todd Phillips has explained why he ended up cutting a scene that showed Lady Gaga kissing a female bystander.
Last March, Lady Gaga was spotted in character as her DC character, Lee Quinzel, filming outside of New York City Hall – a stand-in for a Gotham City courthouse.
The viral clip, taken by a fan, shows Gaga making her way up the steps to the courthouse amid a group of protesters. She then pauses before abruptly pulling a woman from the crowd in for a kiss.
Joaquin Phoenix is seen standing nearby in his full Joker makeup and iconic red and yellow suit.
In the final movie, though, Lee simply ascends the stairs while performing a song and dance before entering the courthouse.
Of the original scene, Phillips told Entertainment Weekly: “It had dialogue in it, and, all of a sudden, I wanted it to be more of a music and vibe moment.
“For that moment to have played, it needed dialogue behind it. Meaning, the woman said something, and then Gaga stopped and did this thing, and it just kind of got in the way of the moment.”
According to Phillips, Gaga improvised the kiss.
Released in theaters last week, Joker: Folie à Deux follows Arthur Fleck (Phoenix) as he’s prosecuted for the crimes he committed in the first Joker (2019) film and thrown into Arkham State Hospital, where he meets the love of his life, Lee.
Despite the years-long anticipation for the sequel, the new movie has become a critical and box office flop. It currently sits at 33 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and amassed just $40m in domestic ticket sales during opening weekend.
Its poor reception has been so unexpected that viewers have begun generating wild theories to explain its downfall.
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One of the more common, yet rather unlikely, theories being floated on X is that Phillips, known for directing the Hangover films, intentionally torpedoed the movie as a response to the controversy surrounding the original.
Joker faced political backlash and was accused by left-leaning writers of pandering to incel culture due to its sympathetic treatment of the central character, a societal outcast turned violent killer.
In a 2019 interview with The Wrap, Phillips pushed back against the “far-left” criticism, asking: “Isn’t it good to have these discussions about violence? Why is that a bad thing if the movie does lead to a discourse about it?
“I think it’s because outrage is a commodity,” he said of the backlash. “I think it’s something that has been a commodity for a while. What’s outstanding to me in this discourse in this movie is how easily the far-left can sound like the far-right when it suits their agenda.”
Joker: Folie à Deux is out in theaters now.
