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Lady Gaga Loves ‘Snapped’ And True Crime So She Was A Natural To Play A Gucci Murderess

“Dangerous things in horror relaxes me,” Lady Gaga once told Jimmy Fallon of her own obsession with true crime.

By Jill Sederstrom

Lady Gaga once compared her love of Oxygen’s “Snapped” and slasher horror films to a “nice cup of tea,” telling Jimmy Fallon in an interview that “dangerous things in horror relaxes me.”

Now, the actress and pop singer is taking center stage in her own true crime drama in the “House of Gucci,” premiering Wednesday in theaters and on Paramount+.

So it's no surprise that Lady Gaga chose to portray Maurizio Gucci’s scorned ex-wife Patrizia Reggiani—who hired a hitman to execute her former love as he walked into his office on March 27, 1995—in a dramatized version of the shocking true story.

Reggiani was convicted of arranging the murder of the Gucci heir in 1998  after Milan police received an anonymous tip that a night porter had been boasting about arranging the execution-style murder, according to The Cut.

Those who knew Reggiani said she was infuriated when her husband left her for another woman. Maurizio allegedly walked out on his wife after she helped him take over the fashion house, leaving her with a divorce settlement that she called “a mere bowl of lentils,” according to the news outlet.

The death led to a sensational trial, where three of the men who helped orchestrate the crime pointed the finger at Reggiani. Her friend and personal astrologer, Pina Auriemma—portrayed in the film by Salma Hayek—also took the stand to tell jurors she had agreed to help Reggiani arrange the killing in a “moment of weakness.”

Lady Gaga told the BBC she believes Reggiani carried out the murder because she was “just too hurt and she was pushed over the edge.”

As for her own love of true crime, Lady Gaga confessed during an 2015 appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” that she often spent her free time watching “Snapped” and NBC’s “Dateline.”

“Dangerous things in horror relaxes me,” she told Fallon. “It really freaks out my friends.”

When Fallon said he wasn’t familiar with the popular Oxygen series, Lady Gaga explained the concept to him. 

“It’s this show where like usually these women live in like, you know, the suburbs somewhere and are, you know, killing their husbands,” she said. “They are putting their husbands in like the trunk of their white Lexus and then they get caught because they use their Costco card when they buy the axe.”

According to Lady Gaga, the shows tend to fascinate her because the women’s “need to kill to survive” causes them to “make the most ridiculous mistakes.”

Which sounds a lot like the character she portrays in "House of Gucci." 

"What I found very fascinating about her was that everybody was saying she was a gold digger, the gold digging black widow,” Lady Gaga told the BBC. "What I felt about her was that she was trying to get ahead in life, she was trying to matter, she was trying to make something of herself.”

Lady Gaga said she “bled humanity into this character” to make her feel more realistic.

"She's never as shiny as the Guccis, she never quite fits in, she's always a little embarrassing. And once once that embarrassment starts to add, that mirror turns around on her and she sees it, she starts to unravel."