‘Joker: Folie a Deux’ composer Hildur Gudnadottir: ‘It’s hard to predict whether people are going to love your upcoming work or hate it’
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Oscar, Grammy, and Emmy Award winner Hildur Gudnadottir has kept awfully busy since winning Best Score at the 2020 Academy Awards for “Joker.” The composer had a pair of acclaimed scores in contention during the 2022 awards race with “TAR” and “Women Talking” and is back again this week with the music for Kenneth Branagh’s “A Haunting in Venice.” But Gudnadottir’s most anticipated work is coming next year: the score for “Joker: Folie a Deux,” the sequel to 2019’s “Joker” that director and writer Todd Phillips has fashioned as a musical.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter about the upcoming film and its expectations after $1 billion in global ticket sales and 11 Oscar nominations including wins for Gudnadottir and star Joaquin Phoenix, the composer said she’s been too busy to really worry about the outside world’s expectations.
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“I’m knee-deep into that right now, and I’m nearing the end of my process for the film. The music was obviously such an important part of the first one, and we have such a strong sense of musical identity that’s embedded into the character. So it’s quite interesting to work on a sequel in that way, but I don’t know if I necessarily feel pressure,” she said. “I don’t really think much about that aspect of people’s expectations, and I definitely don’t think about awards and stuff when I’m working. I just don’t think it’s helpful to the creative process to try and imagine how much people are going to love this or hate this, especially today.”
“Joker” was a lightning rod for controversy after its release due to its violent content and general tone and themes. But Gundnadottir said that’s par for the course at this moment in history due to the polarized nature of society in general.
“With the state of the internet and social media, people are very keen on voicing their opinion, be it for the better or for the worse. And I think that it’s both a good and a bad thing. So it’s hard to predict whether people are going to love your upcoming work or hate it,” she said. “People’s opinions are somehow very strong these days. Either people really love something or they really hate something, and if you create anything today, you have to be pretty prepared for people to either really love it or really hate it. So you just have to engage as little as possible with the internet and try to focus on doing your best in a way that you find most interesting. And then you just hope that the internet is not going to slaughter you.”
Gudnadottir won her Oscar for “Joker” and is an Emmy winner for the HBO series “Chernobyl.” She also won Grammy Awards for both of those scores. That means she’s just one Tony Award away from EGOT status – not that she’s necessarily all that concerned with the designation.
“I don’t feel a real obligation to do that, because I’ve always been very work-focused and not very industry-focused,” she told The Hollywood Reporter when asked about the EGOT. “I didn’t even know that an EGOT was a thing until I was apparently an ‘EGO,’ and I was like, ‘I don’t want to be an ego! What are you talking about?’ I just thought it sounded kind of horrible until someone told me what an EGO and an EGOT was. So, whether I stay as an EGO or become an EGOT, it doesn’t really matter that much to me.”
Gudnadottir said she wasn’t sure Broadway was in her future but did say others have made a suggestion on one possible stage work she might tackle. “I mean, people have been talking a lot about doing ‘Chernobyl: The Musical,’ which would be quite interesting,” she said. “So maybe if we do ‘Chernobyl: The Musical.’”
The new Joker film is out in theaters next year.
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