Time to carb-a-load!
Along with taking nine months to perfect her Italian accent for the role of Patrizia Reggiani in the upcoming drama “House of Gucci,” Lady Gaga also purposely gained weight.
The 12-time Grammy winner, 35, deliberately ate excessive amounts of pasta and bread to get a “more rounded figure” to play the disgraced Italian socialite.
Alongside stuffing her face with delicious carbs, Gaga practiced her accent, which, according to the Hollywood Reporter, was like learning a new musical genre.
“If I can sing rock ‘n’ roll or jazz or country or pop music, I knew I could speak in a specific Northern Italian accent,” the Oscar-winning “A Star Is Born” actress said. “It’s knowing how to use your voice, why, and where, and with who, and how to feel while you’re doing it.”
Gaga stayed in character on- and off-screen throughout the duration of filming, surprising her own family members. “My mother and father met me as Patrizia a couple times,” she confessed. “And they were mostly laughing because my family gets a kick out of my love of artistry.”
But she added that intense commitment isn’t always a good thing.
“There’s a downside to committing yourself to a role in that way because it’s an adjustment for everybody around you. Suddenly, you’re not talking to Stefani anymore with an accent. You’re talking to Patrizia Gucci,” she said.
The pop star, born Stefani Germanotta, also dove deep into her own Italian ancestry to help prep for her role. “We had as much food as we possibly could have on the table to celebrate the good fortune that came from hard work and elbow grease,” she added.
Her grandparents came from Sicily and they had to quickly assimilate to the American way of life. For her role, she explained, “I worked a lot on digging into my ancestry and kind of reversing the car, reverse assimilation. How do I get out of the Italian American thing and get myself into what it means to be an Italian woman?”
“Part of what makes a good character is knowing what the deep need of the character is,” Gaga noted. “But you can’t understand what the deep need of your character is unless you understand your own. My deep need was always to make my father proud. For Patrizia, I think it was to make her mother proud by way of mattering to a man. A man like Maurizio.”
Maurizio Gucci was Patrizia’s husband, who she plotted to kill in 1995. Adam Driver, 37, plays the head of the Gucci brand in the Ridley Scott-directed flick.
“House of Gucci” will be released in theaters on Nov. 24.