![BT: Everybody who came in to audition for the Joker was doing, basically, [Adam West–era Joker actor] Cesar Romero. They weren’t treating the character seriously. All of the actors that we tested were all doing these really silly and bizarre voices. None of it had any serious threat to it at all. Tim Curry actually came in and gave us something really close to what we wanted. It was funny and weird but also definitely had some menace to it. So we hired Tim. He did about three episodes for us. And then Alan Burnett came to me after we did the third one, and we listened to the assembled tracks, and he said, “I think we have to replace Tim.”
AR: He just couldn’t wrap his head around Tim’s performance. And the truth of it is, I never would have recast Tim.
BT: I didn’t want to do it because we had already recorded a bunch of episodes with him and I knew we would have to rerecord them in post, which I knew was going to be a nightmare. But it didn’t take much for him to convince me, because I was kind of leaning that way myself. It’s not that Tim was doing anything bad, it just wasn’t quite what we wanted.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:474ldquxwzrlcvjhhbbk2wte/bafkreicp7nlfegzs6i2hjxdk5qwnt7wcnszrm4ojuo7o7sghjenzgrn724)
BT: Everybody who came in to audition for the Joker was doing, basically, [Adam West–era Joker actor] Cesar Romero. They weren’t treating the character seriously. All of the actors that we tested were all doing these really silly and bizarre voices. None of it had any serious threat to it at all. Tim Curry actually came in and gave us something really close to what we wanted. It was funny and weird but also definitely had some menace to it. So we hired Tim. He did about three episodes for us. And then Alan Burnett came to me after we did the third one, and we listened to the assembled tracks, and he said, “I think we have to replace Tim.” AR: He just couldn’t wrap his head around Tim’s performance. And the truth of it is, I never would have recast Tim. BT: I didn’t want to do it because we had already recorded a bunch of episodes with him and I knew we would have to rerecord them in post, which I knew was going to be a nightmare. But it didn’t take much for him to convince me, because I was kind of leaning that way myself. It’s not that Tim was doing anything bad, it just wasn’t quite what we wanted.
AR: I got a phone call from Mark Hamill’s agent — which was absolutely astounding — saying, “Mark is a huge comic-book fan, a major Batman fan, and would please very much like to be a part of the Batman series.” Mark Hamill (The Joker): I actively wanted to get on this show because I was reading about the people that they were putting together in key positions. I followed the fan press in terms of comic books. I was reading in, I think, Comics Buyer’s Guide that their goals were to make the episodes of Batman analogous to the Max Fleischer Superman cartoons of the ’40s. That was their benchmark of quality. I thought, Oh, my gosh, they’re really going to do this right. It’s not going to be aimed at grade-school kids, like some earlier iterations of the Batman cartoons. AR: So I found a very nice guest role for him. BT: Mark came in and played a corporate tycoon who was responsible for Mr. Freeze’s wife dying. MH: I went in and I just let my geek flag fly. I was asking them all these questions: “Are you going to do Ra’s al Ghul? Are you going to do Dr. Hugo Strange?” AR: He was very grateful, and he pulled me aside at the end of the session and said, “I had so much fun doing this, and thank you so much for bringing me in. But I really want to be a part of the series. I don’t want to just come in and do a guest-star and disappear.” And then, coincidentally, here comes the need to recast the Joker.
![MH: I got a call saying, “They want you to come in and audition for the Joker.” And I said, “Oh, gosh, that’s a little too high-profile for my liking. Not only has it been done with Cesar Romero, but it’s been done by Jack Nicholson. What can I bring to the table that hasn’t been done before?” I said, “I’d rather play Two-Face or Clayface or someone who hasn’t been done.” The reason I went in was because I was absolutely certain that they would be unable to cast me as the Joker simply because, public-relations-wise, the idea of the guy who played Luke Skywalker — this icon of heroism, this virtuous character — playing this icon of villainy? Comic-book fans are notoriously demanding. They’re very opinionated and not shy about letting you know how they feel. I thought it would be a PR disaster that they would not be able to withstand. It gave me a great confidence, since I didn’t think there was any shot at all of me getting the part, so I had that performance anxiety removed.
PD: I remember listening to his audition, and when he did the laugh, I said, “That’s it. That’s just it.” The laugh was cruel, it was funny, there was an undercurrent of terrible sadness to it. It was a laugh from a destroyed soul.
MH: I had done Mozart in Amadeus in the first national tour, and then they transferred me over to Broadway, and one of the things that is relevant to my audition [for the Joker] is that Mozart had this sort of ghastly laugh that threw everybody. I played with that laugh a lot. I’d do a little Dwight Frye, I’d do a little Sydney Greenstreet. I love all those old Warner Bros. movies, so I was just slipping people in. Sometimes I’d get notes like, “It was a little too ‘Jerry Lewis at the matinee’. Reel it back.” I’m telling you this because, in retrospect, after getting the part, I asked Andrea Romano, “How did I get it? What was the process? How did you know that you wanted me?” And she said, “The laugh.” I didn’t want to get pigeonholed into a specific laugh. With the…](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:474ldquxwzrlcvjhhbbk2wte/bafkreihpixqca4m27sihmd2hfhimpnfxajk43vpzhozrncbjllbwofuzxa)
MH: I got a call saying, “They want you to come in and audition for the Joker.” And I said, “Oh, gosh, that’s a little too high-profile for my liking. Not only has it been done with Cesar Romero, but it’s been done by Jack Nicholson. What can I bring to the table that hasn’t been done before?” I said, “I’d rather play Two-Face or Clayface or someone who hasn’t been done.” The reason I went in was because I was absolutely certain that they would be unable to cast me as the Joker simply because, public-relations-wise, the idea of the guy who played Luke Skywalker — this icon of heroism, this virtuous character — playing this icon of villainy? Comic-book fans are notoriously demanding. They’re very opinionated and not shy about letting you know how they feel. I thought it would be a PR disaster that they would not be able to withstand. It gave me a great confidence, since I didn’t think there was any shot at all of me getting the part, so I had that performance anxiety removed. PD: I remember listening to his audition, and when he did the laugh, I said, “That’s it. That’s just it.” The laugh was cruel, it was funny, there was an undercurrent of terrible sadness to it. It was a laugh from a destroyed soul. MH: I had done Mozart in Amadeus in the first national tour, and then they transferred me over to Broadway, and one of the things that is relevant to my audition [for the Joker] is that Mozart had this sort of ghastly laugh that threw everybody. I played with that laugh a lot. I’d do a little Dwight Frye, I’d do a little Sydney Greenstreet. I love all those old Warner Bros. movies, so I was just slipping people in. Sometimes I’d get notes like, “It was a little too ‘Jerry Lewis at the matinee’. Reel it back.” I’m telling you this because, in retrospect, after getting the part, I asked Andrea Romano, “How did I get it? What was the process? How did you know that you wanted me?” And she said, “The laugh.” I didn’t want to get pigeonholed into a specific laugh. With the…
AR: Any actor whom I hired to be the Joker replacement voice would have to match the mouth flaps established by Tim Curry’s performance. And that’s really hard to come up with while introducing a character as intense as Joker — you’re stuck with somebody else’s timing. And Mark was crazy good. BT: It was just like, Hallelujah! Who knew that Luke Skywalker would be our perfect Joker? KC: Luke Skywalker is the nice, young leading man, and most times in films, that’s probably the least interesting character in a film. Well, Mark Hamill could not be further from that. This madman came into the recording studio and he was totally eccentric and he goes a million miles an hour. He talks a million miles an hour. His imagination never stops jumping from topic to topic. He’s a very intellectually alive person, and if you get Mark on a topic, you can’t shut him up for an hour.
Yes — Mark Hamill getting cast as The Joker because he was begging to be on the show RIGHT when Tim Curry got fired is a classic example, as documented in my 2017 oral history of Batman: The Animated Series:
archive.is/uFoOU
