In the final minutes of this year’s The Batman, viewers were treated to a surprise (that wasn’t that surprising): the (distorted) appearance of yet another screen incarnation of Joker. Granted, he was billed as “Unseen Arkham Prisoner,” but you had to be pretty thick not to get it. The lucky actor was Barry Keoghan, the eccentric scene-stealer of movies like The Killing of a Sacred Deer and last year’s The Green Knight. And though it was hard to make out his face, even in a later-released deleted scene, Keoghan’s newly dropped audition video shows his (unused) idea of how he’d like the clown that fights Batman to look like.
— Barry Keoghan (@BarryKeoghan) October 3, 2022
The video, which runs a little over two minutes (and was caught by Deadline), is pretty simple: Keoghan all gussied up, in a suit and suspenders and a little bowler hat, plus a cane. He doesn’t say anything. Instead he struts down a hallway to Saint-Saëns’ classic tone poem “Danse Macabre.” This, the caption posted by British GQ, was what “got him the role of Joker,” even though they wound up going with a different vibe.
Keoghan told British GQ that he actually wanted to play Riddler, but that gig had already been handed to Jonah Hill, who later passed it on to Paul Dano. He described his take on Joker as a “broken-down boy.” He’s not sure when he’s set to play it again (or does know and can’t tell journalists), but he says he’s ready to get back in clown mode “as soon as that call comes.”
(Via British GQ and Deadline)