Tom Rhys Harries Reveals His Biggest Inspirations for His Portrayal of CLAYFACE in the Upcoming DC Movie
Tom Rhys Harries has taken on the role of Matt Hagen, a rising Hollywood star who becomes a horrifying revenge-filled monster when scientific ambition strips him of his identity and humanity. The character Matt Hagen becomes the Batman villain Clayface, and with an 86-year comic history, Tom Rhys Harries had a lot of material to draw inspiration from.
In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, the actor talked about his take on the role, which was deeply influenced by A Serious House on Serious Earth, a 1989 graphic novel written by Grant Morrison with a Clayface rendered by artist Dave McKean.
“There’s something so effective and disturbing about those illustrations in that story,” he says, before dropping another touchstone, the Arkham Asylum video game, in which the transmuting character arrives at “a really effective and psychologically jarring moment.”
The Matt Hagen of Clayface, is a star on the rise in Gotham City, the home turf of Batman. (The Dark Knight himself has yet to be cast in the DCU, which currently remains separate from the Robert Pattinson films.) Harries describes how Matt clawed himself out of a violent, impoverished upbringing in the narrows of the city to build an enviable life as an adult. Then, right on the cusp of true stardom, he sleeps with the girlfriend of a local mob boss, who later carves up his face in wrathful retribution.
Now mutilated and desperate to reclaim his life, Matt comes into contact with a scientist, Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie), and her miracle serum. Though it seems to provide the instant gratification of a non-plastic surgery fix, the bubbling substance, upon injection, begins Matt’s fated transformation into the monstrous entity comic lovers know as Clayface.
“We meet Matt at a real turning point in his career and then, very quickly, at a real turning point in his life,” he says. “It’s a horror, but it’s a thriller. It asks, How far would you go to reclaim your life that you’ve built?”
It will be interesting to see this new take on the classic villain. Clayface hits theaters on October 23, 2026, just in time for spooky season.