George Clooney Makes Batman Nipples Joke About His ‘Catch-22’ Uniform

All these years later, it looks like George Clooney has a pretty amusing attitude about his infamous Batman costume.

While appearing at the Television Critics’ Association press tour, Clooney spoke about getting into the role of Schiesskopf in Hulu’s upcoming Catch-22 miniseries. In the process, Clooney took a chance to poke fun at his Batman and Robin costume, which infamously featured prominent “bat nipples”.

“Any time you put on a costume, with the exception of the Batsuit, it helps you get into character.” Clooney explained. “I was disappointed there weren’t nipples.”

While several actors have stepped into the role of the Caped Crusader since Clooney did so in 1997, it’s hard to deny that the “bat nipples” made a pretty major impact on comic book fans.

“Well I wasn’t thrilled with the nipples on the batsuit.” Clooney explained back in 2014. “You know that’s not something you really think about when you’re putting it on. You figure all batsuits have nipples and then you realize yours was really the first. Batman was just constantly cold I guess. But I have plenty of other things that I’m really obviously embarrassed about too. Oftentimes it’ll be stumbling out of a bar drunk or something dumb like that but as you get older a major goal in life is try to do less and less embarrassing things. You know, try not to face plant publicly as often as possible.”

Joel Schumacher, who directed the DC Comics picture, has previously defended the costume choice, arguing that it was a groundbreaking technology at the time.

“By the time Batman Forever came around, rubber molding had become so much more advanced.” Schumacher explained in 2017. “So I said, let’s make it anatomical and gave photos of those Greek status and those incredible anatomical drawings you see in medical books. He did the nipples and when I looked at them, I thought, that’s cool.”

But despite the controversy surrounding the “bat nipples”, Clooney has previously expressed that he’s not too pessimistic about Batman and Robin.

“I get that question a lot.” Clooney said in the same 2014 interview. “It’s a funny thing, you’ve got to remember that when you’re doing a movie, a lot of times you’re spending 4 or 5 months on set and sometimes you’re making really good friends and sometimes not. Some of the best films have been the least fun experiences and some of the worst, I’ve made lifelong friends out of it. It’s the kind of thing where the memory of the film is very different than how it was reviewed, because it’s months out of your life and you end up making close friends or having great experience on films that don’t necessarily work. And that’s a tricky thing to come to terms with.”