Joker: Folie a Deux Director Reveals Which Actor Played Arthur in the Joker TV Movie

Joker director Todd Phillips said he almost had Justin Theroux play Arthur Fleck in a trailer for the second movie. There’s been a ton of discussion about Joker: Folie à Deux from all corners of the Internet and now you can throw another conversation point on the pile. IGN asked the filmmaker about the rumors to turn the “TV movie” from the sequel into a real element of the movie. Phillips said that he had tabbed Justin Theroux to play the fake version of Arthur Fleck. In Joker: Folie à Deux, Lady Gaga’s character tries to convince Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker to re-assume his old persona as the trial continues. As the efforts to bring back the chaos from the first movie intensify, including the TV movie’s dramatizations could have been an interesting choice to show what the outside world thought about Arthur’s massive stunt. (Apparently word of mouth travels very quickly in this world. It’s how Joker got invited to that late night show to begin with after all.)

“Well, Justin Theroux of course,” Phillips mentioned when asked about who would have been in the TV film portions of the movie. “In fact, I talked to Justin about it. We were going to shoot a trailer at one point. We just ran out of time. Yes, ‘Ethan Chase,’ the actor from the first movie.”

For a lot of people, Joker: Folie à Deux had enough to contend with before even getting to meta “movie within a movie” territory. The sequel has been judged pretty harshly by both critics and audiences in its first weekend out in the world. Our own writers have noted that Joker: Folie à Deux opened below both Morbius and The Marvels. Internationally, the picture has been a bit more upbeat. But, the consequences of the negative press and general fan bewilderment has been a lot to overcome stateside. Add in the controversial ending to this movie and you’ve got all the ingredients for a discourse-generating machine. Unfortunately for Warner Bros. Discovery and DC Studios, that means very little when it comes to getting people into theaters to see the sequel.

Joker 2’s Ending Draws Criticism Online

This box office stint has been a strange one for Joker: Folie à Deux as fans have largely bounced off of the highly-anticipated sequel. Director Todd Phillips took some resolutely massive swings with this film. From having the main character’s ending moments be so controversial to the movie’s DNA being wrapped up in musical numbers, it feels like the filmmaker was trying to make a purely artistic statement. In an interview with EW, Phillips was asked about his decision to end this saga on his terms. The director was adamant that the final moments made sense for his character and challenged audience members to stick with him on the reasoning behind such a puzzling choice.

“He realized that everything is so corrupt, it’s never going to change, and the only way to fix it is to burn it all down,” Phillips told Entertainment Weekly. “When those guards kill that kid in the [hospital] he realizes that dressing up in makeup, putting on this thing, it’s not changing anything. In some ways, he’s accepted the fact that he’s always been Arthur Fleck; he’s never been this thing that’s been put upon him, this idea that Gotham people put on him, that he represents. 

“He’s an unwitting icon,” Phillips continued. “This thing was placed on him, and he doesn’t want to live as a fake anymore — he wants to be who he is.” All of this makes a measure of sense in the world Joker painted. Interestingly, this hearkens back to some of the analysis from the 2019 movie. Essentially, mass media has always been at the heart of Arthur Fleck’s metamorphosis. From his idolatry of the late night show establishment to his dreams of a loving relationship, it’s easy to draw a straight line directly from the old television set to the carnage unleashed on Gotham at the end of Joker. But, Phillips articulates that this is all just fantasy and Arthur basically woke up, and just in time to meet a sad end.

Would you have liked this trailer gimmick if it had come to pass? Catch all the pop culture discussion over at @ComicBook on social media!