Nosferatu’s Bill Skarsgard Teases “Really F–king Cool” Idea for Joker

Nosferatu just hit theaters, and Bill Skarsgård, who plays Count Orlok in the movie, is the talk of the town. Known for playing creepy and weird characters like Pennywise in It, the actor recently sat down with Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast to chat about his current career and upcoming projects. Of course, the topic of “superheroes” came up, especially since many fans still want to see Skarsgård as the Joker at some point. To the public’s delight, he’s also interested in playing Batman’s villain.

“I think I have a really f–king cool Joker in me, probably, somewhere. I think that’d be pretty sick,” he revealed when asked if he would rather play the villain or Batman. The actor shared that he grew up as a comic book fan and that Batman was his favorite. The interesting part is that this could even open the door for Andy Muschietti, director of the 2017 It adaptation, It Chapter Two (2019), and creator of the upcoming spinoff It: Welcome to Derry, with whom Skarsgård has already worked.

The filmmaker is now set to direct The Brave and the Bold, which has just been postponed. The adaptation follows one of Batman’s stories, and while nothing has been confirmed about the Joker for this new production, the fact that Skarsgård is interested in playing the Clown Prince of Crime on screen is something worth considering. When asked about Muschietti being announced for the project, Skarsgård was brief, offering no hints for fans to get their hopes up. “Yeah. I don’t know exactly where he is with it, but yeah, so that was cool,” he said. It’s also worth mentioning that he’s hinted he’s open to playing Bruce Wayne as well, which would fit given his darker role in The Crow.

[RELATED: 5 Iconic Horror Monsters Bill Skarsgård Should Play After Nosferatu and IT]

The actor is also one of the stars who consider Heath Ledger as their inspiration when it comes to the Joker. “I was like 17 or whatever, and that Heath performance… and then he passed away,” he recalled. “I was an aspiring actor, and to me, he represented everything that I wanted to be. His passing and that performance hit me hard at that time.” The actor from Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight is still remembered today as having delivered the best version of the villain, despite all the backlash.

Skarsgård has already mentioned that his often different and frightening roles come from a desire to play characters that make him feel like a real actor since they don’t really resemble him as a person. By now, he has built a diverse range of roles, from Pennywise and Count Orlok to villainous, but more human characters, like Roman Godfrey in Hemlock Grove and Clark Olofsson in Clark. Playing a disturbed one like the Joker, who can shift between these two extremes, is clearly something the actor could do very well.

With Barry Keoghan appearing as Batman’s villain in the 2022 film, and possibly returning in the future, now it’s just a matter of hoping that James Gunn will consider Skarsgård at some point as the official DCU’s Joker. Who knows?