Barry Keoghan Teases His Return as The Joker in THE BATMAN: PART II - "My Smile Says All"
Barry Keoghan appeared as The Joker in director Matt Reeves’ The Batman. He didn’t have a big role, but once you introduce a character like The Joker, you know we are going to see more of him. Reeves is developing an Arkham Asylum series as well as a sequel to The Batman, and either one or both could feature the return of The Joker.
During a recent interview with Etalk, Keoghan was asked if fans can expect to see him reprise his role as the Joker in The Batman: Part II, and he teased his return, saying:
“I can’t really say anything about that my man, but, um, it would be exciting, wouldn’t it? To see The Joker come to life again? My smile says all, you know what I mean?”
Keoghan then flashes a big smile across his face. Of course we are going to see Keoghan as The Joker again!
Reeves previously talked about the look of the Joker, saying: "He's held in this very suspenseful way, away from you visually. But I wanted to create an iteration of him that felt distinctive and new, but went right back to the roots. So he's very much out of the Conrad Veidt mold and that idea of the silent film of The Man Who Laughs."
The filmmaker wanted this version of The Joker to be based on a kid born with a condition in which he never stopped smiling. He said, “It’s not about some version where he falls into a vat of chemicals and his face is distorted, or what [Christopher] Nolan did, where there’s some mystery to how he got these scars carved into his face. What if this guy from birth had this disease and he was cursed? He had this smile that people stared at that was grotesque and terrifying. Even as a child, people looked at him with horror, and his response was to say, ‘Okay, so a joke was played on me,’ and this was his nihilistic take on the world.”
He expanded on this and likened the character to The Elephant Man. He says: "He can never stop smiling. And it made Mike [Marino] and I think about — I was talking about The Elephant Man because I love David Lynch. And I was like, 'Well, maybe there's something here where it's not something where he fell in a vat of chemicals or it's not the [Christopher] Nolan thing where he has these scars and we don't know where they came from. What if this is something that he's been touched by from birth and that he has a congenital disease that refuses to let him stop smiling? And he's had this very dark reaction to it, and he's had to spend a life of people looking at him in a certain way and he knows how to get into your head.'"
Reeves also explains: "Life has been a cruel joke on him. And this is his response, and he's eventually going to declare himself as a clown, declare himself as the Joker. That was the idea."
I’m excited to see the character arc for this version of The Joker play out!