Pop star Lady Gaga stars in the TV show American Horror Story: Hotel.
Even with her chart success, culture-dominating presence and mastery of the art of fame, pop diva Lady Gaga is still prone to first day jitters. When it came to her TV acting debut in American Horror Story: Hotel, she was so nervous, she vomited.
"I threw up into a ziplock bag in my Rolls Royce on the way here [on my first day]. I don't know why I thought that was funny. But it is funny. I threw up in the ziplock bag and I saved it and brought it to [AHS creator] Ryan Murphy.
"He was like 'Oh, you think you can disgust me? You can't!'. Because the thing is, you think you can't get anything past him, but then he met me, and I'll bring a bag of my own vomit to the set and I'll just say 'I did this in the car.' I was completely nervous."
Currently half-way through its series run, American Horror Story: Hotel is proving to be the bloodiest season of the anthology series yet, with most of bloodletting at the hands of Gaga's character, The Countess, a sultry vampire who used to own the titular Hotel Cortez, and now lives in the ornate penthouse.
"I find it very funny that people wonder if that's just the way that I really am," Gaga says of her stylishly-adorned, casually murderous character. "Actually, her and I are very different. It was so hard for me to be mean all time. Ryan was always like, 'Be more of a bitch!'.
Gaga warmed to the character, to the point where The Countess has started to get under her skin.
"I would be lying if I didn't say that every day that I'm here, it's 100 per cent mirrored in my personal life. What's happening in the story is happening in my life. When I'm here, I'm The Countess, and actually when I leave here, I'm The Countess. And it's quite a challenge for Taylor [Kinney, Gaga's fiance] as well because I just don't give a f*** anymore. She's been alive for a hundred years, so no matter what goes on in her hotel, if she loses her cool, she can't handle her shit."
It's difficult to imagine a TV series better suited to Gaga's dark, baroque aesthetic. "My first relationship with American Horror Story was because I am a fan. I love watching the show and I felt a true kinship with Ryan Murphy from afar. There is that thing that we artists like to believe in, which is the zeitgeist, and when you're watching something and you sort of start to go 'Oh he's thinking what I'm thinking but we don't know each other', that's because we are emotionally and intellectually existing on this visceral artistic plane and we're just following our instincts. So when I met him, which was on-set after I said 'yes,' it was a match made in heaven."
The kinship Gaga felt with Murphy strengthened as the series went into production, and she embraced the show's boundary-pushing sensibilities.
"It is living out being fearless through art every day. When we come in here, there are no rules, this is the safe house. What I feel when I'm here is total commitment to telling the best possible story and being willing to take it further than any other show on television. And that's what I like about Ryan. I don't come in here afraid that he's going to say 'That's too much'." Although Gaga's talents have clearly stretched beyond music, she is very conscious of how "singers who act" are often perceived.
"It's always been important to me that if I were ever to make a move in television or as an actress, that it would never feel like a move, and that nobody would ever go 'Oh here she is trying to become an actress and put out a clothing line and a record label'. That's the sort of thing everyone expects - that it's time for my 'empire'.
"I don't give a f*** about that, it does nothing for my soul. What I did want was to be taken as seriously as an actress who went to [acting teacher Lee] Strasberg for almost 10 years. But it's very hard, especially for females, and in pop music, if you give them anything except for a dance performance and number one record, they don't understand it. I think art's about what you can get away with, that's what Andy Warhol used to say."
Who: Lady Gaga
What: American Horror Story: Hotel
When and where: Soho, 9.30pm Thursdays