Global pop superstar and celebrated Italian, Lady Gaga, is preparing for another awards season after her movie star turn in A Star is Born. This round, she's not playing some wide-eyed ingenue, though; she's menacing as they come. Later in November, she'll play Patrizia Reggiani, the Italian socialite who was brought up on charges for the assassination of her ex-husband, Maurizio Gucci in House of Gucci. Not that the only thing that goes into playing an Italian is the accent, but by God, if she has nothing else, she certainly has the accent.
In an interview with British Vogue, the actress explained that she "lived as" Reggiani for a year and a half, sporting this accent for nine months of it. "It’s not an imitation, it’s a becoming. I remember when we started filming, I knew I had become—and I knew that the greater challenge was going to be unbecoming."
She goes on to say that she tried to embody Reggiani with a "journalistic" spirit, opting not to meet the figure she's playing, but rather finding her in different ways. "It was nearly impossible for me to speak in the accent as a blonde... I instantly had to dye my hair, and 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. I started to take photographs as well. I have no evidence that Patrizia was a photographer, but I thought as an exercise, and finding her interests in life, that I would become a photographer."
That isn't exactly how journalism works, but who am I—a writer who has not been nominated for an Oscar—to judge two-time Oscar nominee Lady Gaga for how she inhabits a role? There can be 100 Italians in the room and 99 are critical of your accent, but all you need is one to tell you that you did good.
Justin Kirkland is a Brooklyn-based writer who covers culture, food, and the South. Along with Esquire, his work has appeared in NYLON, Vulture, and USA Today.
