Todd Phillips’ Joker purposefully ended with many questions left unanswered, but now we can cross at least one off the list. Deadline reports that Zazie Beetz is in talks to reprise her role as Arthur Fleck’s neighbor, Sophie, in 2024’s Joker: Folie à Deux. She’ll join Joaquin Phoenix, who’ll reprise his role as Arthur/Joker, and Lada Gaga, who has been cast as Harley Quinn.
In the hit 2019 film, Sophie was largely presented as the object of Arthur’s affections. However, after Arthur goes into Sophie’s apartment unannounced, the film reveals the whole relationship was actually in his head and the two had never properly been acquainted. From there, the movie never shows Sophie again, so some had suggested he may have killed her. But even back in 2019, Phillips himself said Arthur did not kill her—and, in fact, a scene was shot which confirmed that, but it was later cut. As recently as last week, Beetz herself echoed this sentiment in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter.
“In my mind, she lives because she never actively wronged Arthur,” Beetz said while promoting her new movie, Bullet Train. “His victims in the film were generally people that pointedly hurt him. Even within the horror of his realization around his own state of mind, he acknowledges that she’s more of a bystander to his situation than an actor to his situation. So, to me, it made sense that she wouldn’t be harmed by him because his harm was intentional towards certain people and then society at large, which he also felt wronged by in a way. So in my mind, she makes it out unscathed, at least physically. (Laughs.)“
The same interview also sees Beetz discuss—without any mention that she might be in the film—that she totally understood the idea of Folie à Deux being a musical. “I wasn’t really surprised by that,” she said. “Todd [Phillips] has always had a creative approach to the character. I love musicals, and I think of them as the characters are feeling and experiencing so much that they can only sing and dance about it, whether in sorrow or in joy. And I can actually see that within myself as well, because singing and dancing is quite a cathartic experience for me. I was going through a really, really difficult time at one point in my life, and I just started dancing and crying by myself. And that was an expression that matched where I was at that moment. And so I can see Arthur, who is feeling and experiencing so much, dancing and singing about it. He’s the Joker, so I think it makes sense to me.”
Will Sophie herself sing and dance? How will she fit into a story that’s rumored to largely be set inside Arkham Asylum? Filming begins in December and audiences will find out October 4, 2024.
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