Lady Gaga wasn’t an established actor before her critically-acclaimed lead role in A Star Is Born, but in 2001 she did appear — under her real name, Stefani Germanotta — in an episode of The Sopranos, titled “The Telltale Moozadell”.
Now promoting her latest film, Ridley Scott’s high fashion crime drama House of Gucci, she’s taken time to reflect on her acting debut, and where the pre-fame, 15-year-old Gaga was going wrong with her portrayal of “Girl at Swimming Pool #2”.
“When I look back on that scene I can see exactly what I did wrong in that scene,” says Gaga in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly. “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!’”
Of course, Lady Gaga has made some pretty significant acting developments since playing a rebellious schoolgirl on The Sopranos. Besides earning an Oscar nomination for Best Actress with A Star Is Born, her dedication to the craft saw her “live as” House of Gucci’s Patrizia Reggiani for more than a year, delivering a performance that made director Ridley Scott worry that she was “traumatizing” herself.
“I see a very non-specific actor,” she adds of her Sopranos appearance. “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.”
In part, she credits this change to Scott, calling the filmmaker: “An incredible director who creates a sanctuary for you on set to just fly.”
Dive deeper into Lady Gaga’s brief appearance on The Sopranos here, and revisit a clip from the episode below.