We’d known months ahead of release that Barry Keoghan was part of The Batman, but those duplicitous scamps at Warner Bros. listed the Eternals and Dunkirk star as Stanley Merkel, which everyone took as gospel because his namesake had an established comic book history as part of the Gotham City Police Department.
While spoilers inevitably leaked out ahead of time, it was still a shock for a lot of people to discover that Keoghan was actually playing the Joker, setting up the Clown Prince of Crime to be a thorn in Robert Pattinson’s side for many sequels to come. Based on the praise heaped on the actor by Matt Reeves, you’d have thought that was always the plan, but that wasn’t the case.
In an interview with GQ, Keoghan admitted that he “wanted to be Riddler”, and even filmed an unsolicited audition tape that showed him channeling the quizzical villain. He filmed the performance for the express reason of wanting to be in the movie, so you can imagine his disappointment when it was announced Paul Dano had snagged the part instead.
However, four months after chatting with producer Dylan Clark about the project he missed out on, Koeghan’s agent called him up to let him know that “The Batman wants you to play the Joker – but you cannot tell anyone”. From there, it was onto set and into the makeup chair, and depending on how the rest of the franchise goes, maybe one day we can add “and the rest is history” as an addendum.