Diksha Sundriyal
In Ridley Scott’s ‘House of Gucci,’ Lady Gaga takes on the role of Patrizia Reggiani, who was convicted of conspiring in the murder of her husband, Maurizio Gucci. The film charts the beginning of their relationship to the bloodied end, tracing the arc that puts the character in a grey light. Lady Gaga’s nuanced approach adds more depth to Patrizia, and one of the key elements of her performance is the accent. With Italian characters being played by American actors, adopting different accents became an important part of the role, and Lady Gaga dedicated herself to making her accent as authentic as possible. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Lady Gaga Adopted Variations of Italian Accents to Play Patrizia Reggiani
Lady Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, is of Italian descent, and in portraying Patrizia Reggiani, she decides to take a methodical approach. Because she and the other cast members were required to film in thick accents throughout the film, Gaga wanted to inhabit the accent so that it would come naturally to her and she wouldn’t have to think about it so much while filming. So, for about nine months, on and off camera, she adopted a Northern Italian accent and fully immersed herself in the character. To reflect the change in Patrizia’s status over the course of the story, the actress started with “a specific dialect from Vignola,” which suggests Patrizia’s humble roots. She took on a “higher class way of speaking”, which would seem more appropriate when the character enters higher circles with the Gucci name.
To reflect the chameleonic nature of Patrizia, Gaga brought slight differences in the accent depending on who the character was speaking to. Apart from doing the vocal exercise, the Academy Award-nominated actress also incorporated some other changes. She said that she found it “nearly impossible” to speak in Patrizia’s accent as a blonde, so she dyed her hair black. She said, “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.” She revealed that she also turned to photography in an effort to pay more attention to the things around her. In trying to see the world through her character’s lens, she noted that Patrizia loved beautiful things, so she deleted any photo that didn’t seem beautiful from that perspective.
This extensive approach served Gaga well while filming, but she confessed that towards the end, she started to have “some psychological difficulty.” Because she had spent nine months in character, both on and off screen, she found it difficult to shake off the character even after filming had ended. She shared an instance when she went out for a walk, which was her first in two months. She felt a sense of panic set in as she thought she couldn’t distinguish between real life and filming anymore, because for a moment she thought she was on a movie set. After the filming wrapped, she dropped the accent and went back to normal, but she felt parts of the role lingering in her, stating that the “unbecoming” was more challenging than the “becoming.”
Lady Gaga was Dedicated to Presenting an Authentic and Personal Portrayal of Patrizia
Considering that she had her own husband killed, Patrizia Reggiani would be seen as a murderer by many, but Lady Gaga wanted to present her in a more complex light. In her year-long research for the role, she became “fascinated with the journey of this woman,” and went through old recordings of her and the newspaper stories printed about her over the years. The actress clarified that her intent wasn’t to glorify Patrizia, but rather to highlight the character’s thirst for survival and, in that sense, “pay respect to women throughout history” who have faced a harrowing journey of their own. She wanted to explore the depths to which a person could fall when they were “pushed over the edge,” but at the same time, she was intent on presenting her own version of the character, rather than someone else’s.
She approached the role with “the eye of a curious woman” to try to understand Patrizia rather than judge her. This is why she didn’t read Sara Gay Forden’s ‘The House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed,’ which serves as the source material for the film. In the same vein, she didn’t meet the real-life Patrizia Reggiani because she didn’t want anyone to tell her how to play the character. At the end of the day, she wanted to present the story of “a real woman” rather than that of “a bad woman,” thus offering a more nuanced portrayal of the character, rather than simply labeling her a villain.
Read More: Is House of Gucci Based on a True Story?
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