It’s beginning to sound like something really unfortunate happened to Christian Bale while he was playing Batman. Over the last few weeks, Robert Pattinson has been on the road for The Batman‘s press tour, giving extremely entertaining stories as he travels around the world.
One story that’s going down particularly well is Pattinson meeting Bale and asking for his advice on playing the Dark Knight. His only response was that you need to ensure that the batsuit comes with a zipper, thus allowing the actor to use the bathroom.
But evidently, Pattinson was not the only actor with whom Bale shared this pearl of wisdom. During his recent appearance on BBC Radio One, The Batman star was dumbfounded to discover that Bale had given the same advice to Ben Affleck before he starred in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
“Wait, that happened to [Affleck], too? That’s crazy. It’s just like Christian to say that to people: ‘You gotta [have a zipper].’ Christian obviously had a lot of accidents, he’s very concerned about it.”
In a 2013 interview with Access Hollywood, Bale had actually gone into detail about why he had cautioned Affleck to be mindful of the fact that bathroom access is paramount.
“The only thing I said to [Affleck] was to make sure to be able to take a piss without having anyone help him, because it’s a little bit humiliating. You have to have someone … help you out of the costume in order to be able to do that. So that was my main piece of advice for him.”
The fact that notoriously serious Bale didn’t give suggestions on how to portray Batman’s drive for justice or grief at the death of his parents, but rather focused on practical matters on life in the batsuit speaks volumes. Apparently, he is speaking from his personal experience of knowing how difficult getting into the Batman mindset is when you know that some poor assistant on set is going to have to crowbar you out of a complicated piece of rubber armor so you can take a leak.
Hopefully, Pattinson took Bale’s advice and successfully averted such mishaps. The Batman is debuting across theaters today.