Lady Gaga Dishes On Dangerous ‘House Of Gucci’ Scene: ‘I Feel Safe Being In Pain’

Actress and singer Lady Gaga has been doing a lot of reflecting on “House of Gucci” lately.

She recently sat down with “The Guilty” actor Jake Gyllenhaal for Variety’s “Actors on Actors” series. During the virtual chat, the actors sat down to talk about how they really immersed themselves in their roles.

Lady Gaga plays Patrizia Reggiani, the wife of Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver) in Ridley Scott’s 2021 drama “House of Gucci.”

During one of the scenes, she submerges herself underwater in a bathtub and stays there for a long time. According to Gaga, she was underwater for so long that Ridley Scott called cut mid-scene because he was concerned for her safety.

“When I did the bathtub scene, when I went under, they had to yell ‘Cut’ because they were like, ‘Get her out of there!’” Gaga told Gyllenhaal.

However, she assured him, and the cast and crew, that there was nothing to worry about. “I was fine. I can hold my breath for a long time. I’m a singer,” she added.

Gaga also doesn’t mind pushing herself for her art. “I feel safe being in pain,” she added. “I feel safe in art. I almost think I feel safer with art than I do in life. I feel protected by art… I feel art has saved me my whole life.”

Gaga says she prefers method acting to help get the most out of each scene.  “When I'm in character, I don't pretend we're not filming,” she said. “I get people who are like, 'Why did you keep your accent the whole time?' Can you imagine going in and out of that s--- all the time, and I would only get three takes? I had to be ready.”

“Acting, for me, was a way to totally escape who I was,” Gaga continued. “And I think I've done it my whole career with taking on the artistic persona of whatever music I'm writing and living inside my art. And for films, it's different, but it's not.”

In a previous interview, Lady Gaga talked about what it was like to play a woman that was perceived as "crazy."

“People do love to watch women fall apart,” Gaga said. “But they love to watch women fall apart on film and in television. When women fall apart in real life and are vibrant and passionate, we’re called crazy. We’re called b——. We’re told we’re too much.”

“Patrizia’s flavor was her DNA and it was a product of her upbringing,” she added. “It was also the product of being incessantly put down by this system of men.”

“What I always wanted was to portray her in the way that I believed, which is that she has true and real regret at this point in her life,” she continued. “That she regrets this murder. In order to figure out why she did it, I had to track it all the way through the lens of survival. Survival as a woman, I think, is a very complex narrative, and I tried to weave the story of many through her.”

However, she did not receive Patrizia's blessing in order to play her in the film.

Patrizia Reggiani has openly criticized Lady Gaga's casting, but Gaga herself didn't seem to mind.

“I have to be honest; I don’t think that Patrizia’s blessing would’ve been meaningful to me,” she said.

“She seems to me to possess this quality where she really wanted to drive the narrative of this famous story,” she continued. “And all of that to me was a total lie, and a total coverup for the pain that I knew was inside of her. And I’ve studied this very closely to get it right.”

“I don’t think the world has heard from her in a real way,” she added. “So that’s why I wanted to play her in a real way. I did my best to get there.”