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When Barry Keoghan first heard that Matt Reeves was developing a new Batman movie, he desperately wanted to take part. As we know, Barry Keoghan wound up portraying Joker in The Batman, but the actor told GQ that he originally had his eyes set on Riddler. He put together a wordless audition video set to Camille Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre while wearing a bowler hat, carrying a cane, and channelling A Clockwork Orange. Although it’s been available online for several years, some of you may have never seen it or didn’t realize it was for The Batman. You can check out the audition below.
Barry Keoghan met with The Batman producer Dylan Clark, who told him that the role of Riddler had already been filled, but months later, he got a call from his agent who told him, “The Batman wants you to play the Joker – but you cannot tell anyone.” The actor only appears as the Joker near the end of the movie, but a deleted scene was later released that found Robert Pattinson’s Batman asking him for help.
Despite the brevity of his appearances, Barry Keoghan wanted to make his take on the character memorable and made sure that his natural blue eyes came through the prosthetics. “I wanted some sort of human in there behind the makeup,” Keoghan said. “I want people to relate to him… [to know] this is a façade he puts on.” The actor described his Joker as “a broken-down boy.“
The Batman director Matt Reeves has said that Joker’s appearance wasn’t meant to set up a sequel. “[It] was never meant to be an Easter egg scene, to say like, ‘Oh guess who we’re using in the next movie,’” Reeves said. “It was meant to be something delicious for the audience to sort of experience those two characters meeting, and in fact for the Unseen Prisoner to say to him, ‘Riddle me this,’ which is of course right out of ‘Batman’ 66.” I find it hard to believe that Barry Keoghan’s Joker won’t appear in any Batman sequels, but the actor said that he’ll be there “as soon as that call comes.” Although Barry Keoghan may not have won the larger role of Riddler (played brilliantly by Paul Dano), he’s set himself up for future appearances.
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