Willem Dafoe still has aspirations to play the Joker on screen, and he’s come up with his idea of how to do it.
For many Batman fans, there is one actor who should have been cast by now as the Joker, but who never quite managed to land a role as Gotham’s Clown Prince of Crime. This actor Willem Dafoeit seems that Spider-Man: No way home The star is as interested in playing the character now as ever. while appearing in The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Dafoe discussed his idea to play the character, an idea he had “flourished” before. He said:
“I came up with an idea a while ago, but it didn’t quite happen. I thought it would be cool for me to play a trickster, like incorporating his thing.”
The root of this idea came back in March 2022, when Dafoe brought up his idea while talking to him GQ. At the time, Dafoe was considering how to play a “fake” Joker alongside the Joaquin Phoenix character, allowing for an entirely new dynamic for the character. He said at the time:
“There is an interesting thing, like, if there was a Joker Imposter. So it would be possible to not have a dueling Joker but someone saying he’s a Joker who isn’t the Joker… If you had Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker, then you’d have someone who was imitating or violating what he did.”
Of course, in the DC Comics universe, there have been multiple iterations of the Joker, including the 2020 story Batman: Three JokersAs the title suggests, the Joker has actually become three different men. There are certainly many ways Dafoe could play a version of the Joker, and if James Gunn has any sense, he’d go out of his way to find a project that would require Dafoe to become a famous comic book villain and give fans everything they want.
Too many clowns for Willem Dafoe to play this role?
When it comes to any of the biggest characters in comic book history, there’s always the question of when do people start to get bored of the same characters popping up over and over again. After adapting several versions of the Joker to the screen, including the current slate of Barry Keoghan and Joaquin Phoenix, who have emerged on the heels of Cameron Monaghan, Jared Leto and Heath Ledger as the latest versions of the unstable villain, is there still room for more?
The simple answer to that is yes. Joker is such a complex character that there are many ways to reinterpret him, and the fact that in 1989 Jack Nicholson became everyone’s favorite Joker, until after that Heath Ledger became a completely different version, and then Joaquin Phoenix came along and produced something like no other. The Joker has been seen on screen, there’s no stopping Dafoe, or indeed anyone else putting their own unique spin on the character.
In the near future, Joaquin Phoenix will return as Arthur Fleck Joker: Folie à Deuxand Barry Keoghan would get his first real run out in the role Batman: Part Twobut there will be many fans who are not secretly hoping Dafoe will join this list at some point.
