According to a new report from Entertainment Weekly, Lady Gaga is joining the Netflix hit Wednesday. And you know what, why not? Her valiant but fruitless pursuit of an acting Oscar has led her down some dark (and critically panned) paths. Let her go queen out with Jenna Ortega on a campy teen soap opera that reads like the streaming era’s answer to the CW. She deserves to have some fun, and so do we!
EW has no details on the character Gaga will play, just that she is supposedly in Europe shooting the show right now. The singer (real name Stefani Germanotta) joins a star-studded second season cast that includes Steve Buscemi, Christopher Lloyd, Thandiwe Newton, Billie Piper, Haley Joel Osment, Heather Matarazzo, Evie Templeton, Owen Painter, and Noah Taylor, Joanna Lumley, Frances O’Connor, and Joonas Suotamo.
Among her many talents, Gaga has shown a canny knack for ingratiating herself to the right auteurs. As an actor, she broke out on Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story and picked up a Golden Globe award for her efforts. She went on to work with Bradley Cooper on A Star Is Born, Ridley Scott on House Of Gucci, and Todd Phillips on Joker: Folie À Deux (though the latter was a flop of historic proportions, it obviously made sense for Gaga to get in good with the Joker crew after Joaquin Phoenix took home an Oscar for the first one). Wednesday presents an opportunity to form a relationship with executive producer and director Tim Burton. It’s not at all difficult to imagine Gaga appearing in a Burton film someday; their over-the-top and often spooky artistic sensibilities actually seem quite well matched.
On top of that, Gaga—and her music—have an interesting relationship to Wednesday. Last year, the pop star’s track “Bloody Mary” cracked the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time more than 10 years after its release, because fans of the show were recreating Wednesday’s signature choreography to a remix of the track on TikTok. It ended up being referenced in Ortega’s Saturday Night Live hosting promo; Gaga herself did a version of the dance and posted it to TikTok.
“I’m sure Netflix would love” for Gaga to join the cast, Ortega said on the Golden Globes red carpet in January 2023. Speaking with Variety, she added, “I think Mrs. Thornhill and Wednesday had this weird mentor relationship or kind of understood each other in a certain way, so, if Lady Gaga were to be a part, I think it would have to be two monsters that understand each other.”
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