Lady Gaga will play Harley Quinn in Todd Phillips‘s Joker: Folie à Deux, and the filmmaker is explaining how her version of the villain differs from previous iterations.

The comic book character has been a fan favorite since the source material and versions of the character in Batman: The Animated Series, her animated series, and in film where Margot Robbie portrayed her.

“While there are some things that people would find familiar in her, it’s really Gaga’s own interpretation, and Scott [Silver, co-writer] and I’s interpretation,” Phillips told Empire in an interview. “She became the way how [Charles] Manson had girls that idolized him. The way that sometimes these [imprisoned murderers] have people that look up to them.”

Phillips continued, “There are things about Harley in the movie that were taken from the comic books, but we took it and molded it to the way we wanted it to be.”

For the “Bad Romance” singer, playing a character in a musical, she had to harmonize in a different way than when she usually performs.

“People know me by my stage name, Lady Gaga, right? That’s me as that performer, but that is not what this movie is; I’m playing a character,” she told the magazine. “So I worked a lot on the way that I sang to come from Lee, and to not come from me as a performer.”

Joker: Folie à Deux’s cast also includes Catherine Keener, Brendan Gleeson, and Zazie Beetz. The film is part of DC Elseworlds and is not part of the universe that Peter Safran and James Gunn have been building since taking the helm of DC Studios.

From Deadline.com