Lady Gaga Reveals Alter Ego Jo Calderone 'Is No Longer with Us' After Portraying the Character in Her 'You and I' Video
During her lie detector test with Vanity Fair published on Feb. 19, the "Abracadabra" singer, 38, shared what happened to her edgy chain-smoking alter ego that was part of her Born This Way era.
When asked what happened to "this person" as a picture of Jo Calderone is shown, Gaga hesitates.
"Oh, this person is no longer with us," she said without setting off the polygraph test.
Related: Lady Gaga Will Do Double Duty (Again!) as SNL Host and Musical Guest, Shane Gillis and Tate McRae Also Return
Gaga debuted Jo Calderone in 2011. Per The Hollywood Reporter, Calderone is "supposedly a mechanic from Sicily" and starred alongside Gaga in her "Yoü and I" music video.
The character made his first live appearance at the 2011 MTV VMAs in a white T-shirt, black jacket and a mess of curly dark hair. Calderone performed "Yoü and I" with Queen's Brian May joining for a guitar solo and presented Britney Spears with the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard award that evening.
As far as inspiration for the music video transformation went, Gaga wrote on X in 2011: You will never find what you are looking for in love, if you don't love yourself."
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She also told V about how Calderone came to be in 2011. "Beginning as an invention of my mind, Jo Calderone was created with [British fashion photographer] Nick Knight as a mischievous experiment," she began.
After working together tirelessly and passionately for years, eating bovine hearts, throwing up on ourselves, giving birth to an alien nation and an AK-47, Nick and I began to wonder: how much exactly can we get away with?"
Gaga further contemplated: "How can we remodel the model? In a culture that attempts to quantify beauty with a visual paradigm and almost mathematical standard, how can we f--- with the malleable minds of onlookers and shift the world's perspective on what's beautiful?"
"I asked myself this question. And the answer? Drag." Calderone would appear on the cover of Vogue Hommes Japan and after the cover was printed, Knight told Gaga, "I believe Jo has to sing."
Related: Lady Gaga Confirms 'Telephone' Video Continuation Is Still Coming 15 Years Later — but Will Beyoncé Join Her Again?
Gaga concluded after performing as Calderone and spending "as him," that by "remodeling the 'model artist,' 'model citizen,' or 'supermodel,' we can liberate the present. "
Gaga, whose album Mayhem comes out on March 7, hasn't seemingly spoken about Calderone since.
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