Taking on the role of the Joker would make anyone nervous and it turns out Joaquin Phoenix nearly didn’t take the role because of how scared he was to it.
The Clown Prince of Crime has been brought to life numerous times with amazing performances by Heath Ledger – who won an Oscar for his take on the character – Mark Hamill and Jack Nicholson. Honestly, I totally understand being a little hesitant to follow those guys (not so much Jared Leto).
Speaking with Gamesradar, Phoenix spoke about how fearful he was about the role.
“It took me a while [to commit]. Now, when I look back, I don’t understand why.”
“There was a lot of fear, yeah… but I always say there’s motivating fear and debilitating fear. There’s the fear where you cannot make a f***ing step, and there’s the kind where it’s like, ‘OK, what do we do? That’s not good enough.’ And you’re digging deeper and deeper. I love that kind of fear. It guides us, makes us work harder.”
Starring in Joker would also likely be nerve-racking due to the fact millions of people know the character and they’re just waiting to tear down any new version.
Thankfully, however, it seems like most people are just excited to see what Phoenix does with the role.
What’ll be interesting about this new flick, is that the director Todd Phillips has previously said that his version doesn’t follow any source material and he doesn’t care what people think of it.
He also told the publication that he only wanted Phoenix for the role, “We wrote this script for Joaquin. It’s true.”
“Joaquin knows it. Half the reason we wanted to even attempt writing it was, ‘Man, imagine if we get Joaquin. Think of what we could do.’ The goal was never to introduce Joaquin Phoenix into the comic book movie universe. The goal was to introduce comic book movies into the Joaquin Phoenix universe.”
Joker is set for release on October 3, watch the trailer below:
