Even though Barry Keoghan has found himself cast as the most popular villain Batman has ever crossed paths with, the Eternals star initially auditioned for another character in the Caped Crusader’s rogues gallery. According to Keoghan, he sent in a tape to play The Riddler, a role that ultimately went to Paul Dano.
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“I just made it up,” the actor recently said in a chat with Esquire magazine. “I wanted to make it Kubrick-y: symmetrical, the X on the back, the square doorframe, everything square. I just wanted swag to come across. Swag and endearing. It was just me giving my idea. And then I’s like, ‘I’ma send this in!’”
Keoghan ended up appearing as the Clown Prince of Crime in the closing moments of The Batman and a lengthier delayed scene released online shortly thereafter. Like Robert Pattinson’s Batman, Matt Reeves says Keoghan’s take on the iconic villain is a version of the baddie before he actually becomes The Joker.
“He can never stop smiling. And it made Mike [Marino] and I think about — I was talking about The Elephant Man because I love David Lynch. And I was like, ‘Well, maybe there’s something here where it’s not something where he fell in a vat of chemicals or it’s not the [Christopher] Nolan thing where he has these scars and we don’t know where they came from,” Reeves said in a chat with IGN last year. “What if this is something that he’s been touched by from birth and that he has a congenital disease that refuses to let him stop smiling? And he’s had this very dark reaction to it, and he’s had to spend a life of people looking at him in a certain way and he knows how to get into your head.’”
“Life has been a cruel joke on him,” the director added. “And this is his response, and he’s eventually going to declare himself as a clown, declare himself as the Joker. That was the idea.”
It has yet to be seen if Keoghan will return as the villain, though the actor has said he’s ready to play Joker once again.
The Batman: Part II will be released on October 3, 2025. The first film in the franchise is now streaming on Max.
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