‘Real enough to be scarier’: How Paul Dano found answer to a vicious Riddler in The Batman

Don’t look for cackling and green tights as Paul Dano brings The Batman’s Riddler to sinister life. He’s found a darker side – and Australia helped.

Paul Dano might have freaked out a few unsuspecting Australians while he was preparing for his role as The Riddler in the new superhero blockbuster The Batman.

The mild-mannered, nondescript-looking star was based in Melbourne in late 2020 while his actor wife Zoe Kazan was filming the Netflix drama Clickbait, and used the time to dig deep into the twisted psyche of Edward Nashton, whose unhinged, serial-killer alter-ego is the nemesis of Robert Pattinson’s Batman in director Matt Reeves’ take on the much-loved superhero.

“I was reading some books about serial killers in your delicious coffee shops,” Dano recalls with a laugh.

“You know, Melbourne has incredible coffee. And a wonderful theatre company let me use a rehearsal room of theirs for a few days so I could have a space to go to and talk to myself.”

And some oblivious optician in the southern capital likely had a very weird day when Dano tried on pair after pair of glasses in search of some that would perfectly set off the creepy, masked outfit The Riddler uses to torment the Caped Crusader with puzzles, ciphers and oblique online messages.

“Now, how do you know now that?,” Dano says, a little incredulously.

Paul Dano does some of his best work in the dark as the Riddler in The Batman.

“That’s hilarious – but that’s true. I went glasses shopping in Melbourne as well – not the glasses that I actually use – but I was just trying to start to cultivate what the right look for him might be and just doing my own little bit of work there.”

While he says he was by no means a comic book aficionado or superhero superfan, Batman has long been a part of Dano’s life.

Not only did he love Tim Burton’s 1989 version with Michael Keaton in the role, but Gotham City has always been a thinly disguised version of Dano’s home town, New York City.

“The Batman is the coolest of all these huge films or comic book characters,” he confirms.

But even the most fervent of Dark Knight fans might well be wondering whether we need yet another big-screen version.

Since Burton’s two memorable films with Keaton (followed by increasingly forgettable sequels with first Val Kilmer and then, disastrously, George Clooney, in the lead role), there was Christopher Nolan’s revered trilogy with Christian Bale, before Ben Affleck took up the cowl and cape for Batman vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice and Justice League.

Paul Dano plays the Riddler in The Batman.

Yet with more than 80 years of comic book history since Batman first appeared in 1939 in issue 27 of Detective Comics, there’s plenty of material to work with, and Reeves found his sweet spot by focusing on the character’s early years – a post origin story and yet not the fully formed Batman audiences know best.

Pattinson’s tortured take is violent and vengeful and prone to putting his body and very life on the line to weed out the crime and corruption in his city.

The fresh perspective impressed Dano, who is better known for smaller, more dramatic fare such as of There Will Be Blood, 12 Years a Slave and Prisoners, and he was intrigued by Reeves’ realistic, gritty approach.

He also admired the parallels Reeves drew between Bruce Wayne – who witnessed his own parents’ murder – and The Riddler, also an orphan, but brought up without wealth and privilege.

“I was totally surprised and blown away by Matt’s script,” says Dano.

“He brought such a singular point of view, and so much emotion and psychology and theme, and there was something in it that was real enough that made it even scarier.

“The first thing we spoke about was the two sides of trauma and how the Batman is born of trauma and so is the Riddler. I was ready to go basically from the first phone call.”

Dano had some very short-lived fears when he first heard Reeves had written the part of the Riddler with him in mind.

“I heard The Riddler and you course you go to a green suit or tights or something,” he laughs.

Certainly, long-time Batman fans will remember Frank Gorshin’s cackling, green-suited, “riddle-me-this” japester from the campy 1960s TV show with Adam West, and Jim Carrey was predictably over the top sporting an emerald, question-mark-adorned, body suit in 1995’s Batman Forever.

While he was aware of those previous versions Dano was surprised – and delighted – that his Riddler was to be a different beast entirely and dug deep into decades of comic book lore by way of research.

Frank Gorshin as The Riddler in the TV show Batman.

Jim Carrey’s version of The Riddler in Batman Forever.

“I think I was given permission by the script, frankly to interpret and go in our own direction,” he says.

“I am well aware and it’s good to know the fan culture around this is so passionate that I think you have a responsibility to know your Batman.

“So just as important was looking at all the comics. In fact, that was probably the most important Batman-related thing – just soaking in the energy from all those incredible artworks and comics and characters.

“But there wasn’t too much to take from anything else, which I actually think was the gift here that we could discover what this Riddler was and what he needed.”

But in addition to mining the source material, Dano also had the more difficult, dark task of getting into the mindset of a character who is essentially a domestic terrorist, as well as a serial killer.

This Riddler was inspired in part by the infamous Zodiac Killer, who claimed to have killed 37 people in northern California in the 1960s and was never caught, and also leans hard into the murky world of online conspiracy theories and anti-government, anti-authority sentiment, which has proliferated in recent years and particularly in the Covid era.

“It’s sort of astonishing to think that Matt started writing this five years ago,” says Dano.

Robert Pattinson as Batman.

“Researching serial killers and researching these corners of the internet was not easy.

“It’s not light material, and there’s something that you’re trying to tap into … but I did look into that stuff. And you know, there’s a lot of people who feel their voice needs to be heard and the internet is one way to do it.”

Batman movies – indeed any superhero movies – can live or die on the strength of their villains, and the late, great Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning, mesmerising Joker in The Dark Knight is often held up as the gold standard.

Dano says he hugely admired that performance, although it didn’t influence his work as The Riddler.

In contrast to Ledger’s scene-stealing, purple-suited Crown Prince of Crime, director Reeves intentionally crafted The Riddler as a much more shadowy, ghostlike figure that would allow Pattinson’s debut outing as Batman to take centre stage.

“He was an incredible actor,” says Dano of Ledger. “And I honestly think his performance in Brokeback Mountain is probably one of my favourites. It’s such a beautiful, soulful, incredible piece of work.

“But, I think with our task at hand, the most important thing to do was to bring the spirits of the comics, and the history of the films and the animated TV show and all of it somehow, hopefully with us, but really to make our own thing.

“So I certainly wasn’t thinking about anybody’s performance while making this because I think that would do a disservice to both of us, or rather to both characters.”

The Batman opens in cinemas on Thursday.