Willem Dafoe Asked Emma Stone to Slap Him 20 Times

Willem Dafoe has had a pretty prolific career and even as he ages the actor is still keeping busy as well as breaking new ground. Dafoe has several new projects coming up, but one that has people talking has to be the upcoming Yorgos Lanthimos-helmed And, which also stars Emma Stone. The reason that And has people talking is because The New York Times' new profile on Dafoe revealed that the actor had Stone slap him twenty times for a scene in the film. Not much is known about the plot of the film, but Stone has come out in praise of her costar during that same profile.

"There's this instinct to perform that many actors have — the 'look at me, look at me!' kind of performer. He's the opposite of that," Stone said. "Maybe it's changed through the years. A lot of actors I bond with have been doing this for a long time, and you know they've gone from 'I' to 'We.'"

Willem Dafoe Still Wants to Play The Joker

Earlier this week Dafoe was asked about becoming the Clown Prince of Crime while appearing on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon earlier this week. 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."

"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.

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