Lady Gaga recalls bond with late Tony Bennet while working on 'Joker 2'

Lady Gaga remembered her bond with the late Tony Bennett and how he always admired her taking risks.

The 38-year-old Born This Way hitmaker had a close bond with the late singer, enjoying a successful professional partnership in the years before he died in 2023.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Gaga told the outlet, "He was somebody who loved how risk-taking and different I am and I always thought that was so cool.”

Remembering Bennett, she continued, “He was 60 years older than me, and he would flinch less than young people that I would meet. People that would be like, 'Why is she dressed that way? Why is she singing that way? Why is her stage performance so theatrical?' Tony, he just never even flinched. He was just a really compassionate, inclusive person."

Speaking of how her latest film, Joker 2, inspired the album, Harlequin, and how its was her first time working on something without Bennet, she mentioned, "This was my first time without Tony and it wasn't emotional probably in the way you're thinking. It wasn't sad. It was actually like he was with us all the time.”

“And also, in a funny way, if I had put rock and roll chords over production in a record that I did with Tony years ago, I don't know how he would've felt about that. Tony didn't love rock and roll. But he would've said 'Wow that's amazing'. He was definitely with us in the studio but he was mostly inside of me,” she further noted.