‘At the time I wasn’t ready’: 11 years ago Joaquin Phoenix turned down a famous role and then played

Before he was Todd Phillips’ Joker, Joaquin Phoenix almost became Christopher Nolan’s Joker! The two men met as The Dark Knight was preparing to portray Phoenix as the psychopathic clown of the Batman universe.

The podcast asked about it Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin (via termPhoenix first wanted to say that he had little recollection of the exact discussions at the time, but he did talk about his meeting with Christopher Nolan:

I can’t imagine what this movie would be like without Heath Ledger, how about you?

“I remember talking to Chris Nolan about The Dark Knight, but somehow it didn’t happen. I was not ready at that moment. This is one of those moments where I asked myself why I didn’t want to do this. But it’s not about me, there’s someone who’s up to something.

“I can’t imagine what this movie would be like without Heath Ledger, how about you?”

I felt I shouldn’t have done that

He concludes by saying that in his hazy recollections of this time, dating back at least 17 years, Nolan also came to this conclusion:

“I felt like I shouldn’t have done it, but he was also like, ‘That’s not him.’

In the end, Heath Ledger would indeed land the role and win a posthumous Oscar for his performance. Died on January 22, 2008, just a few months before the film’s release, he will never know the mark he left on the character of the Joker, already performed and cultivated by Jack Nicholson in front of Tim Burton’s camera. The 1992 Batman animated series.