OMG, you’ll never believe this, but… it turns out yet another actor playing The Joker was really difficult on set.
Nothing will ever match Jared Leto sending his Suicide Squad costars dead rats and used condoms, but Joaquin Phoenix was apparently no slouch in the “making coworkers feel uncomfortable” department.
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According to a recent New York Times article, Joker director Todd Phillips revealed his star often “lost his composure on the set, sometimes to the bafflement of his co-stars.”
“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.”
While Phillips seems accepting of the diva antics, especially if the performance gets the kind of acclaim this one is getting, he isn’t letting it go either.
Joaquin visited Jimmy Kimmel Live on Tuesday night to promote the controversial film, and — much to his surprise — the director had sent along an outtake clip of one of the thespian’s outbursts.
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In this case, it was a mini-Christian Bale blowup at cinematographer Lawrence Sher, whom he could apparently hear whispering from behind the camera. Joaquin, in his Joker makeup, stops what he’s doing and says (with a LOT of bleeps for TV):
“The constant whispering. Just shut the f**k up, dude. I’m trying to find something real.
Sorry. It’s not a big deal, it’s not a big deal. Yeah, it kind of is.”
He then brings up some kind of ongoing conflict.
It seems Joaquin got the nickname Cher on set — for some reason — and he blames Sher.
“I know you started the Cher thing, Larry. It’s not even an insult. Cher, really? She’s a singer, actor, dancer, fashion icon. How is that a f**king insult?”
Ha! Can’t argue with that!
And then he gets up and walks out, much as Phillips described, saying:
“I’m f**king out of here with this guy.”
It’s difficult not to see this as an act of passive aggressive revenge by the director, ambushing him with the clip on Kimmel.
And we say “ambushing” because Joaquin looks very genuinely MORTIFIED afterward. He says:
“This is so embarrassing. Sometimes movies get intense because you’re a lot of people in a small space and you’re trying to find something, so you feel intense. That was supposed to be private…
I’m a little embarrassed, I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry you guys had to see that.”
Kimmel tries to ask followups about the conflict with “Larry,” but Joaquin is not up for it, saying half-jokingly:
“Let me think about this a bit more. My publicist will issue a formal statement tomorrow. Can we move on?”
He then tries to get sincere, saying:
“I should probably publicly apologize to Larry. Larry…”
But he can’t do it! He interrupts his own train of thought, saying instead:
“The thing is though — I am sorry — the thing is though, he did whisper constantly while we were trying to work and sometimes it was really hard to find the emotion that you’re after, so it was wrong of me, I’m sorry, but he shouldn’t have done it.”
Ha!
What a joke of an apology! No wonder people are applauding this guy’s performance!
Watch the whole interview (below)!
[Image via Jimmy Kimmel Live/Warner Bros/YouTube/WENN.]
The post Watch Joaquin Phoenix Get HUMILIATED By Surprise Clip Of His Diva Behavior On ‘Joker’ Set! appeared first on Perez Hilton.