Batwoman star Nick Creegan recently spoke about being the first Black man to take on the infamous and iconic role of The Joker in live-action.
In an interview with TheWrap, Creegan discussed how his new portrayal came to be, from the influences of past Joker actors to the selection of various purple hair extensions. "It's crazy," Creegan said. "It's wild, actually. Yeah, I've done a lot of processing the past few weeks, months, you know? It's still surreal to me. It's been a wild ride for me. You know, the reception of the new Joker, being the first person of color to play this role -- the messages and the love I've been getting has just been overwhelming. It's been a fun ride."
Elsewhere in the interview, Creegan explained that he bonded with Batwoman co-star Nicole Kang due to the fact that he was the first Black man to play The Joker and she was the first Asian American woman to play Poison Ivy. "And then, when we found out that we would have a scene together, we were just like, 'Oh my God, this is the best thing ever,'" he said. "Fans are going to lose their minds when they see these two on screen."
Despite taking on a role with such vaunted precedent, Creegan has already begun adding his own twisted flair to the character. "The laugh, for instance, is actually my own laugh," he explained. "People are like, 'Oh this Joker laugh is so good!' I'm like, 'Don't think I'm actually crazy, but this is how I laugh whenever something's really funny.' So I have a really weird, interesting -- I call it my auteur laugh. That's mine. So yeah, there are bits and pieces from other Jokers, but it’s very much an over-exaggerated version of what Nick would be like in this situation."
In Batwoman, Creegan's new Joker is not the first Clown Prince of Crime, the one with a murky and uncertain origin story. Instead, Creegan plays Marquis Jet, a business scion-turned-sociopathic after a fateful childhood encounter with the original Joker. In the story of the show, Marquis took a direct shock to the brain from The Joker's supercharged electric joy buzzer when his school bus was taken hostage.
As Marquis' mother Jada (Robin Givens) grew increasingly terrified of her young son's new violent tendencies, she went as far as hiding the birth of her younger child Ryan Wilder (Javicia Leslie) from both Marquis and the world. Wilder, after surviving a harrowing childhood in the foster system, would become Gotham's second Batwoman, setting up arguably the most personal Batperson/Joker rivalry ever portrayed.
Creegan is stepping into some truly enormous clown shoes by Hollywood standards. Not only has the arch-nemesis of Batman been played by legends like Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson, Mark Hamill, Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix, but The Joker is one of only two characters whose portrayals have won Academy Awards, the other being Vito Corleone from the venerated Godfather trilogy. Furthermore, where Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro won for playing Corleone at different ages in the same series, Ledger and Phoenix won with the Clown Prince of Crime for two completely unrelated portrayals. In modern cinema, the unhinged Joker has become as archetypal and prestigious as a role can possibly be. Asked to summarize his upcoming portrayal in three words, Creegan obliged with, "Total fucking chaos."
Batwoman returns to The CW Jan. 12.
Source: TheWrap