Whether he knew it or not, Joaquin Phoenix might have been destined to play The Joker. His portrayal of the Batman villain in “Joker” won him his first Oscar for Best Leading Actor — though his return to the role in the musical sequel “Joker: Folie à Deux” turned into a critically panned box office bomb. But years before those projects were a twinkle in the eye of the man who directed “The Hangover,” Phoenix came close to donning clown makeup for another acclaimed take on the character.
In a recent interview on the podcast “Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin,” Phoenix revealed that he was initially in the mix to star in Nolan’s film in the role that ultimately went to Ledger.
“I remember I talked to Chris Nolan about ‘The Dark Knight’ and that didn’t happen for whatever reason,” Phoenix said. “I wasn’t ready then. That’s one of those things where it’s like, ‘What is in me that’s not doing this?’ And it’s not about me. There’s something else. There’s another person who is going to do something. … I can’t imagine what it would be if we didn’t have Heath Ledger’s performance in that film, right?”
Ledger and Phoenix’s Oscar wins have turned The Joker into one of the most coveted roles for actors working today, but that wasn’t always the case. Phoenix recalled his hesitation when Nolan reached out to him about what was then considered by many to be a campy comic book character — though he’s not sure Nolan was sold on him either.
“I don’t know whether Christopher Nolan was coming to me saying, ‘You’re definitely the person.’ I can’t remember the context of how we met, but I know we met,” he said. “My feeling was I shouldn’t do this, but maybe he also was like, ‘He’s not the guy.’”
Of course, Phoenix eventually changed his mind about the character and signed on for Todd Haynes’ Scorsese-inspired take on material. In a 2019 interview with IndieWire, Phoenix explained that he found Haynes’ script so exciting that he was willing to put his aversion to superheroes aside.
“I couldn’t come up with any answers,” he said. “That’s what made me feel I had to do it. I felt overwhelmed and terrified by it. Usually when I’m scared of something, it makes me feel like I have to go towards it. I had so many mixed feelings about the character. And I like that. I don’t think we have enough of that in movies, particularly in a superhero genre movie. I hate the idea of labeling something, just mostly because I don’t really know what the genres are.”
