Heath Ledger’s portrayal of Batman’s most famous foe, The Joker, in Christopher Nolan’s crime thriller The Dark Knight received a lot of love and appreciation from critics as well as the audiences.  The actor’s brilliant performance also earned him the Best Supporting Actor Oscar award in 2009 posthumously.

Interestingly, when Nolan announced the casting of Ledger for the role prior to the film’s making, he received a lot of backlash from fans as well as his colleagues and Warner Bros. executives.

During a recent roundtable moderated by The Hollywood Reporter, several genre writers and showrunners present were asked if they had ever taken fan suggestions into account while developing any of their projects. To this, Christopher Nolan’s brother Jonathan replied that instead of taking fan suggestion, his brother went the complete opposite direction.

Jonathan recalled how his brother’s decision to cast Heath as The Joker in his Batman Begins follow-up film was not received well initially. He revealed that he himself was not happy with Christopher’s casting call.

“When I wrote The Dark Knight, Chris [Nolan] had to figure out how we’d tackle the Joker,” Nolan said. “Chris had a good meeting with Heath Ledger. And no one got it — I didn’t get it, the studio didn’t get it. And the fan community was … we were fucking pilloried for it. ‘Disaster, the worst casting decision ever!’ Chris just stuck to his guns. It was a question of not giving the fans what they’re asking for but what they want — which is, ‘Let’s find a really fuckin’ serious actor, somebody who’s going to come in and just tear this role to pieces.'”

But, thankfully, Heath Ledger’s iconic performance proved them all wrong. He has, in fact, set a new benchmark for the character that is yet to be met by any other actor. Actor Jared Leto played the role of the Joker in Suicide Squad, and now Joaquin Phoenix is all set to play the character Todd Phillips’ Joker movie.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter