Lady Gaga Looks Back on ‘Sopranos’ Acting Debut: ‘I Can See Exactly What I Did Wrong’

Ryan Lattanzio
·2 min read
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Long before she became an Oscar winner for Best Original Song for “A Star Is Born,” and now a possible Best Actress Oscar contender for “House of Gucci,” a teenage Lady Gaga starred in “The Sopranos.” She had a one-off guest role in the Season 3 episode “The Telltalle Moozadell” as “Girl at Swimming Pool #2” and was then credited by her given name, Stefani Germanotta. In a recent podcast with Entertainment Weekly, the “House of Gucci” star opened up about her small role on the beloved HBO series, and where she thinks she went wrong in hindsight, knowing what she knows now as a seasoned actress in movies and TV series like “American Horror Story.”

“When I look back on that scene I can see exactly what I did wrong in that scene,” Gaga said in the podcast tied to her award-winning role in House of “Gucci,” which just won her a surprise New York Film Critics Circle prize. “I didn’t know how to listen in a scene! I was supposed to laugh, and it was sort of like, cue, laugh…. I see it and I go, ‘oh, that’s not a real laugh!'”

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Gaga added that she’s “grown a lot as an actor” compared to her “Sopranos” days as “Girl at Swimming Pool #2,” laughing and smoking and eating pizza in the scene.

“The nuance and being specific as an actor is something that can grow over time if you’re willing to listen and really hear the other actor that you’re working with,” she said of her process transforming into murderess Patrizia Reggiani, which involved a nearly year-long immersion into the role (and four to five hours of hair prep every morning during filming).

“I see a very non-specific actor [on The Sopranos], and now I see myself as someone who is at least really striving to be specific without thinking about it, and that requires a lot of work ahead of time,” Gaga said. “I really thank my acting teacher, Susan Batson, she and I worked for months and months on this before we filmed, and Ridley Scott, an incredible director who creates a sanctuary for you on set to just fly.”

“House of Gucci” is now playing in theaters.

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