To get my bias out of the way, Lakeith Stanfield is my favorite actor working today. However, I don’t think that my love for is work is completely unfounded. I think he is a profoundly talented actor with an incredible range of character work. He’s able to go from the distinguished and intelligent detective in Knives Out to the hustling player in the streets of Uncut Gems. Or a misunderstood and broken kid in Short Term 12 to a brainwashed and deranged man in Get Out. The list goes on and on of phenomenal and incredibly varied performances of: Sorry to Bother You, Atlanta, Photograph, Selma, Straight Outta Compton, etc. He even stands out with good performances in otherwise despised films like the Netflix adaptation of Death Note.
The reason I bring all of this up is because it’s recently been brought to my attention that he’s been quite vocal about wanting to get a chance at taking on the character of the Joker. And I think it’s obvious that I’d be ALL FOR IT! He’s proven himself as an actor who can take on any role and I think he deserves a chance in the Matt Reeves trilogy that’s coming up. His passion for the character mixed with his talent as a performer makes him the ideal candidate in my eyes. I’m curious to hear your guys’ thoughts on him hypothetically taking on the role? Do you have any hang ups? If so, why/what are they?
Here’s a clip of him talking about his interest in the character:
And here’s some fan art made by ApexForm on Instagram to give you an idea of what he could possibly look like:
The Joker has been my favorite villain for about 3 decades now- I love his enthusiasm. When Kimmel asked if Joaquin’s performance made him nervous about following it up, he basically said “Wait till they get a load of me…”
Same! That always gets me. There are very few people who would go into this character with that kind of attitude (especially given the success of that particular movie). Made me even more interested in what he’d want to do.
Definitely recommend you check out his work. Atlanta is an FX show and can be found on Hulu. Knives Out is on amazon prime I believe. Those are the ones I know off the top of my head, but all the stuff I listed is really great in my opinion. Definitely check him out. (Though, warning, Sorry to Bother You is a bit… Extreme. Actually, a lot extreme. Great movie, but gets really weird and NSFW at the end jsyk.).
His performance in Atlanta doesn’t really scream Joker to me. He always seemed like a chill ass guy in films or TV. Sorry To Bother You was another film of his I watched and he kinda has the same delivery.
I’m not saying any of his films “scream Joker.” I’m saying he clearly had a wide range of performance and is strong in pretty much all of his roles. Hence, my interest in his take since he seems interested. Hope that clears it up.
Any work of his you recommend? There was a romantic movie starring Rel Howery that he is in I think but I didn’t watch it.My only exposure to the guy is Atlanta, Get Out (very brief), and Sorry to Bother You where he was the lead.
Definitely check out Short Term 12. He’s super good in that. Not the star role, but still really good. And then Knives Out. Two very different performances, but both really strong
