House of Gucci, colloquially known by way of pinched-finger pictorial has dominated the film news cycle since a first look of Lady Gaga and Adam Driver's central, "gloriously doomed" couple - Patrizia Reggiani and Maurizio Gucci, appropriately, the former having slain the latter in a high-profile crime of passion - was shared in March.
But when the film's first trailer was released, attention turned to Gaga's conspicuous accent: a variously inflected cocktail of Italian noblewoman and Russian aristocrat. And, in a recent interview with British Vogue, Gaga revealed that she used that accent for almost a year. Non-stop.
In her (heavily-accented, probably) words: “It is three years since I started working on it, and I will be fully honest and transparent: I lived as her [Reggiani] for a year and a half. And I spoke with an accent for nine months of that.” Off camera, too? “Off camera,” she confirms, solemnly. “I never broke. I stayed with her."
She continues:
“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, so I took my point-and-shoot camera everywhere that I went. I noticed that Patrizia loved beautiful things. If something wasn’t beautiful, I deleted it.”
We know what you're thinking: how close is she to Daniel Day-Lewis? We're wondering the same thing. But Gaga is one of the hardest, most dedicated workers in the biz, so it's not so much of a surprise to hear of her affinity for method. Hopefully, with the film releasing at the end of the month, it all proves worth it.
House of Gucci is directed by Ridley Scott and features an all-star ensemble of Gaga, Adam Driver, Jared Leto, Jeremy Irons, Salma Hayek and Al Pacino. It releases in theatres on November 24.