A viral moment of Lady Gaga locking lips with a female on the set of “Joker: Folie a Deux” didn’t make the final cut of the movie — and now, director Todd Phillips is revealing why.
While filming the sequel in March 2023, the singer-turned-actress, 38, was photographed sharing a same-sex kiss with a female protester. In the deleted scene, Gaga’s character, Lee, a grittier version of Harley Quinn, stops while walking up the courthouse steps and grabs a woman in the crowd before planting a fat one on her.
The photos immediately went viral but never wound up in the movie. When asked about the kiss, Phillips explained why he didn’t include the scene.
“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,” Phillips told Entertainment Weekly in an interview posted on Monday, Oct. 7.
As The Post’s movie critic Johnny Oleksinski shared, “Joker: Folie a Deux” is a musical in which Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix (who plays mentally ill Arthur Fleck on trial for murder from the 2019 original) “sing for no reason” in what he called a “pointless sequel.”
While Phoenix, 49, won a Best Actor Oscar for the original, which earned $1 billion at the worldwide box office, the sequel isn’t getting the same reaction, with moviegoers walking out of the theater mid-movie and trashing the film on social media.
Gaga reportedly signed on to the project without reading the entire script.
“I think we sent her half the script, and she texted me pretty quickly that she was really into it, that she loved it and everything you want to hear. And then I went out to her house, and we met about what it was going to be, the rest of it, because we hadn’t written it yet,” Phillips told The Hollywood Reporter.
The actress — who is also an Oscar winner — talked about Phillips’ bold “Joker” sequel to Variety in Aug., admitting it was risky.
“Todd took a very big swing with this whole concept and with the script, giving the sequel to Joker this audacity and complexity. There’s music, there’s dance, it’s a drama, it’s also a courtroom drama, it’s a comedy, it’s happy, it’s sad,” Gaga said. “It’s a testament to [Todd] as a director, that he would rather be creative than just tell a traditional story of love.”
However, the numbers are in, and they’re not good.
“Joker: Folie à Deuxâ€Â brought in only $37.8 million in its debut weekend compared to the $70 million it was originally estimated to bring in. Phoenix’s original “Joker” earned $39 million in its first Friday alone in 2019, as reported by Variety.
