No Exit: Danny Ramirez Had Heath Ledger’s Joker Prep in Mind

Danny Ramirez is bursting onto the scene, having appeared before mainstream eyeballs in 2021’s Marvel series The Falcon and The Winter Soldier. He is going on to appear in the Top Gun sequel later this year and is gearing up for his Hulu release of No Exit. The 20th Century film headed to the Disney-owned streamer adapts a 2017 novel by the same name, calling for some dark turns for characters, their psyches, and their fates. For Ramirez diving into his No Exit character of Ash, he saw parallels to when comparing it to that of Heath Ledger’s journey with playing the Joker in The Dark Knight.

To work on No Exit, the cast and crew traveled to New Zealand. Upon arrival, New Zealand protocols during the COVID-19 pandemic called for new visitors to quarantine for a full two weeks before going to work. This left Ramirez in his hotel room, alone with his script and plans for No Exit. It’s a story similar to that of Ledger, who dove into his Joker work in a now-famous self-imposed isolation where he kept notes in a diary to get into character.

“Early on, because of Heath, and it was also around two weeks that he was in the cabin, it was in the back of my mind,” Ramirez told ComicBook.com. “Because it was government-regulated quarantine, I knew that I just had to be careful with the extent I went to, because if I wanted out, I couldn’t. I’d still have to stay in the space. So I just, I had to be very cautious in that.”

Early reports claimed that Ledger’s work lead to his tragic passing, however, more recent accounts and the I Am Heath Ledger documentary (which includes insights from the actor’s family) have since debunked a connection between his work as Joker and his passing.

Ramirez did still want to make sure he came up for air while immersing himself in the role of Ash and it was easy enough to do so given who was staying in the hotel room next door during his quarantine period. “There was a safety buffer because Scott Frank was literally next door to me in the the hotel,” Ramirez explained. “It was just like, we could hear each other’s phone conversations. So it was cool to kind of be able to go for it and then kind of like put my feet back on the ground and just kind of almost just build the engine that was gonna take off for the movie. And it was then cool to then start shooting the movie and have that engine like on idle until it’s time to rub it up. But yeah, it was something I definitely kept in mind about.”

Are you excited for No Exit? Share your thoughts in the comment section or send them my way on Instagram. No Exit starts streaming on Hulu this Friday.