Joaquin Phoenix turned down playing Joker in The Dark Knight

Joaquin Phoenix spoke with Christopher Nolan about playing Joker in The Dark Knight, but says he “wasn’t ready then.”

During a recent interview on Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin, Joaquin Phoenix revealed he was approached to play the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. However, Phoenix didn’t think he was ready to play the role at the time. Of course, Health Ledger wound up playing Joker and absolutely stole the show, even winning a posthumous Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

“I remember I talked to Chris Nolan about ‘The Dark Knight’ and that didn’t happen for whatever reason,” Phoenix said. “I wasn’t ready then. That’s one of those things where it’s like, ‘What is in me that’s not doing this?’ And it’s not about me. There’s something else. There’s another person who is going to do something. … I can’t imagine what it would be if we didn’t have Heath Ledger’s performance in that film, right?“

Phoenix continued, “I don’t know whether Christopher Nolan was coming to me saying, ‘You’re definitely the person.’ I can’t remember the context of how we met, but I know we met. My feeling was I shouldn’t do this, but maybe he also was like, ‘He’s not the guy.’“

Twenty years later, Phoenix was finally ready to tackle the Joker. The 2019 film was a phenomenon, grossing over $1 billion worldwide and earning Phoenix an Oscar for Best Actor. Unfortunately, the recent sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux, has bombed, both at the box office and with critics and audiences. At the moment, the film has only grossed $201 million worldwide and could potentially lose the studio up to $200 million. Yikes.

Our own Chris Bumbray wasn’t a fan of the sequel, feeling that it only exists because the first movie made a boatload of money. “Perhaps Joker was too big of a hit not to get a sequel, but watching Joker: Folie à Deux, you get the distinct feeling that this was an exercise in style for Phillips rather than a sequel that HAD to be made,” Bumbray wrote. “As it is, though, this Joker sequel spins its wheels and winds up being an often dull courtroom movie livened up by occasional flights of fancy into musical numbers. Those sequences are the best in the film, as without them, this would feel like a wholly unnecessary epilogue to what was originally a pretty powerful film.” You can check out the rest of Bumbray’s review right here, and be sure to let us know what you think of the film as well.

Although it’s hard to think of anyone other than Heath Ledger as Joker in The Dark Knight, could you have seen Joaquin Phoenix in the role back then?