Joaquin Phoenix Opens Up About the 'Strong Reaction' to 'Joker'

Joaquin Phoenix is on the cover of Vanity Fair‘s November 2019 issue, out now.

On the reaction to Joker and his character: “It’s a difficult film. In some ways, it’s good that people are having a strong reaction to it…there’s so many different ways of looking at it. You can either say here’s somebody who, like everybody, needed to be heard and understood and to have a voice. Or you can say this is somebody that disproportionately needs a large quantity of people to be fixated on him. His satisfaction comes as he stands in amongst the madness.”

On taking the role: “I was going through [the script] and I realized, I said, ‘Well, why would we make something, like, where you sympathize or empathize with this villain?’ It’s like, because that’s what we have to do. It’s so easy for us to—we want the simple answers, we want to vilify people. It allows us to feel good if we can identify that as evil. ‘Well, I’m not racist ’cause I don’t have a Confederate flag or go with this protest.’ It allows us to feel that way, but that’s not healthy because we’re not really examining our inherent racism that most white people have, certainly. Or whatever it may be. Whatever issues you may have. It’s too easy for us and I felt like, yeah, we should explore this villain. This malevolent person.”

On fiancee Rooney Mara: “She’s the only girl I ever looked up on the internet. We were just friends, email friends. I’d never done that. Never looked up a girl online.”

On not wanting to discuss the death of his brother, River Phoenix, during the promotion of Walk the Line: “Because I came out publicly as an actor at that time, I suddenly was confronted with having to talk about something that already was very public, in the public sphere, where you’re in a five-minute interview, every five minutes and everything, at a f–king junket. It felt like, ‘Well, I’m not sure this is the right place and it feels insincere to be talking about this and I can hear in your voice that you’re trying to sound like somebody who really cares and is interested, but let’s be f–king frank about what’s happening here.’ It was just much easier to go, ‘F–k you,’ which is an easier thing for me for whatever reason, than to explain it.”

For more from Joaquin, head to VanityFair.com.