ABC(LOS ANGELES) — While he’s already earned praise for his gritty take on the Batman villain Joker, Joaquin Phoenix says an outtake that showed him cursing out a colleague on set would have better left on the cutting room floor.
Instead, it ended up on Jimmy Kimmel Live!. The late-night host said that director Todd Phillips shared the clip with him, and Phoenix admits the end result was “embarrassing.”
Then again, with the actor’s history of both pranking late-night shows — and actually bolting from interviews he doesn’t like — it makes more sense that the actor’s publicist tells ABC Audio the “outtake” was fake.
The clip shows Phoenix sitting and smoking, wearing nearly all of his Joker makeup, while he berates an off-camera person named “Larry” — director of photography Lawrence Sher — for “constantly whispering” while Joaquin is performing.
Apparently, Sher commented that Phoenix’s demands for silence made him a “diva” like Cher, to which Phoenix replies, mumbling under his breath, “Cher. Really?! Singer. Actor. Dancer. Fashion Icon. You say that like it’s an insult.”
“I should probably publicly apologize to Larry,” Phoenix told Kimmel, and then apologized, saying, “I am sorry, but he did whisper constantly while we’re trying to work, and sometimes it’s really hard to find the emotion you’re after.”
He then added, “He shouldn’t have done it.”
Joker, which also stars Robert DeNiro and Zazie Beetz, opens nationwide Friday.
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