The Sandman’s Boyd Holbrook Interested in Playing The Joker

Over the weekend actor Boyd Holbrook made a splash playing his second antagonist in a comic book property, taking on the role of The Corinthian in Netflix’s The Sandman TV series. Having previously played Donald Pierce in 2017’s Logan, it’s starting to seem like Holbrook has an affinity for playing bad guys previously seen in the panels of comics, so does he have any others on his radar that he’s eager to play? Speaking in a new interview with Men’s Health, Holbrook downplayed the idea that he’s actively looking for another character from a comic book to play in a show or a film, until he remembered The Joker.

“I just really want to play characters that are foreign to me,” Holbrook said. “Selfishly, because that’s where I get to get my point of view on a different culture, or a different perspective that’s someone else’s, that’s not mine. I feel like The Sandman is pretty high on my bar. I’m never the kind of guy to be closed-minded like I’d never do that, I’d never do that….It really depends. I mean, I think now that we’re talking, The Joker… that character seems to be endlessly reincarnated in an interesting way. Sometimes the anchor is fun, but usually those secondary characters are really great to play. There are just more keys on the keyboard.”

To Holbrook’s point, every interpretation of The Joker on the big screen has its fans somewhere, plus out of hte five actors that have played him on the big screen in live-action (Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger, Jared Leto, and Joaquin Phoenix)….two of them have won Academy Awards for their portrayal of the DC Comics villain. 

It sort of seems unlikely that Holbrook might get the chance to play the clown prince of crime on the big screen or in a series any time soon, especially since Barry Keoghan will seemingly be filling that role in the world of The Batman, but stranger things have happened. Plus if you consider that sequels to Joker and The Batman are in the works there will potentially be two different versions of him on the big screen. That said, Holbrook has another baddie he’d like to put on his resume.

“It’s not that I have a this or that type of preference, it’s just what’s been happening,” he told the outlet about choosing between “good guy and bad guy” roles. “And I think now, after Indiana Jones 5 comes out, I think you’ll start seeing me do a lot of different things-because I’ve exhausted that aspect. After that, I mean, maybe if like a Bond villain came up, I would do that. But what else?”

Take your pick, Joker or a Bond villain.