Willem Dafoe Revisits His Idea for Playing The Joker

Spider-Man baddie Willem Dafoe seems to have mostly given up on the idea that he could join Joaquin Phoenix in an upcoming Joker sequel, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to forget about the concept entirely. Appearing on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon earlier this week, the star was quizzed about the ever-present fancasting that would turn the Green Goblin into the Clown Prince of Crime. And, as you might expect, Dafoe had thoughts. The star, promoting his new movie Inside, was asked about the possibility of playing Joker. His response was a joke, noting that there are already a few Jokers out there.

“Hasn’t that been done?” Dafoe quipped. 

“I floated an idea a while ago, but it didn’t quite happen,” the actor told Fallon. “I thought it would be cool for me to play an imposter, like slipstreaming his thing. But we’re doing other things.”

You can see the video below.

“There is something interesting about, like, if there was a Joker imposter,” Dafoe said last year. “So it would be possible to have not only dueling Jokers but someone that says to be the Joker that isn’t the Joker. And that kind of opens up the possibility of an interesting story, particularly if you had Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker, and then you had someone who was either imitating or riffing off what he did. I fantasized about that. But other than that I am not talking to anybody [about it], you’re the first one.”

For now, that doesn’t seem to be the trajectory of the sequel. Joker: Folie a Deux is in production now, with Phoenix and Lady Gaga playing The Joker and Harley Quinn, respectively. The movie, which has been characterized as a musical, intends to interrogate the complicated and abusive romance between the two characters.

“It makes me so happy, because I said from the very beginning that all I want is for Harley Quinn to be one of those characters, the way Macbeth or Batman, always gets passed from great actor to great actor,” The Suicide Squad star Margot Robbie previously said of Lady Gaga taking on the role. “It’s kind of like someone gets to do their Batman, or someone gets to do their Macbeth. I feel like, in not so many cases, are they female characters – Queen Elizabeth I, but beyond that, which I got to have a crack out as well, which I was honored to do. I was like, ‘Wow! Cate Blanchett did Queen Elizabeth I. Now I get to.’ It’s such an honor to have built a foundation strong enough that Harley can now be one of those characters that other actors get to have a go at playing. And I think she’ll do something incredible with it.”