Joaquin Phoenix leaves interview when questioned about Joker’s violence

Joaquin Phoenix walked out of an interview promoting Joker after being questioned about its violence.

Joker is almost a week away from opening day, and the press, early reviews, and promotion are underway in the meantime. Its star, Joaquin Phoenix, has been making the interview rounds along with his director, Todd Phillips, and fellow cast members. But some of the actor’s experiences with interviewers have been chillier than others.

In a recent one with the UK publication The Telegraph, a question about Joker and its violence potentially encouraging copycats didn’t sit well with Phoenix and he walked off. The sitdown was conducted by film critic Robbie Collin who bluntly asked if Phoenix thought the movie might “perversely end up inspiring exactly the kind of people it’s about, with potentially tragic results?”

Taken aback by the query, Phoenix muttered a response — reportedly “Why? Why would you…? No, no.” — before getting up and abruptly bailing. Ultimately, Collin’s article makes no mention of what Phoenix said. All he wrote of the incident was Phoenix’s “fight-or-flight response kicks in,” and he stared at Collin with a “thin-eyed glare.”

Phoenix returned after the intervention of a Warner Bros. PR person, able to move forward with questions. He explained he “panicked,” Collin writes, “because the question genuinely hadn’t crossed his mind before.” Collin added Phoenix “then asks me, not for the last time, what an intelligent answer might have sounded like.”

Ready to open up about what it was like playing his character, the tormented Arthur Fleck, Phoenix stated:

"“Typically, the motivations of characters in most movies, certainly in the superhero genre, are very clear. And that wasn’t the case in this, and to me, that was a challenge. There was something there to explore that I didn’t fully understand.”"

He added that Fleck poses “questions with no easy answers.”

Phoenix opened up in the past about playing the part. In July of 2018, when still in production, he talked about meeting with Todd Phillips and wanting to do a character study of a comic villain for years before he heard about Joker. He added the world the film occupies is “unique” and “scares the f***ing s**t out of” him.”

He expressed similar observations to The New York Times earlier this month. The “danger” of Joker, which he called “terrifying,” motivated him to sign on.

During the NYT interview, much like with The Telegraph, Phoenix had trouble answering some questions. Asked about being approached for the role initially, Phoenix couldn’t remember and got nervous. He responded, “It sucks — this is why interviews are the worst,” and added he almost made up a story to sound interesting.

Though he didn’t walk away from the question of being approached, Phoenix’s habit of walking off suddenly to take a breath because something doesn’t click the right way happens when filming scenes too. It occurred on the set according to director Todd Phillips, who said to the NYT:

"“In the middle of the scene, he’ll just walk away and walk out.  And the poor other actor thinks it’s them and it was never them — it was always him, and he just wasn’t feeling it.”"

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Joker and its violence are under fire from critics comparing it to A Clockwork Orange and Taxi Driver, one of Phillips’ inspirations. Star of the Martin Scorsese classic and Joker Robert De Niro, who plays talk show host Murray Franklin, explained to the NYT that audiences can identify with the movie and its main character without going overboard:

"“People identify with it in some way — not that they go to those extremes. They can understand the sentiment. Sometimes those things are cathartic.”"

De Niro knows what it’s like when someone who saw his film went to extremes. His lead role in Taxi Driver, Travis Bickle, was marked as an inspiration for would-be assassin John Hinkley in the 1980s.

De Niro and Phoenix’s co-star Zazie Beetz also addressed the question of violence and sympathy for Arthur Fleck. At the Toronto International Film Festival, where Joker generated further positive reactions and Oscar talk, Beetz told Variety:

"“It’s kind of an empathy toward isolation and an empathy towards what is our duty as a society to address people who slip through the cracks in a way. There is a lot of culture of that right now. So is it empathy for that or just an observation on personalities who struggle?”"

Joker, the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion winner, opens in theaters around the US on October 4th.