Few actors have had such a successful, celebrated career as the great Robin Williams, but the superhero genre was something he never got a chance to try. A bit of a shame in retrospect and a character such as The Riddler would undeniably fit him like a glove, a role that slipped through his fingers. Something he talks about in an older interview that has now been posted on Youtube. He also talks about how he was also offered the role of the Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman movie early on, which also did not happen.
“It happens. Sometimes they use you as bait. They’ll say, ‘We’re sending it out to him,’ and you go for it. And then they give it to somebody else.”
But the Riddler he was clearly more genuinely interested in, and it’s easy to see why.
“I don’t know what happened with that. But maybe there’ll be something else down the line, maybe the Riddler. Who knows?”
One of the screenwriters to Batman Forever also talks about how close it was to Williams getting the role.
“Later on when we wanted to do the Riddler, it was going to be Robin Williams. With the Riddler, we wrote it with Robin’s voice. He read our script and loved it, they just didn’t make the deal. So when it came to Jim Carrey, he very much did our script. It was just a little less Robin Williams.”
There were also rumors that there was some sort of feud between Williams and Carrey after the latter got the role in Joel Schumacher’s film, something that Carrey would later deny.
“Radar Online is completely off base and creating a feud that didn’t exist. Robin may have expressed insecurity about me and my rise to success but I have never had anything but the greatest respect for him and his genius. He was always respectful to me in person.”
Williams’ interest never waned and he even talked to Nolan about the possibility of playing the Joker in his trilogy of films. In fact, by the end, he was willing to take almost any role, as long as it was in a Batman movie.
“I’d play the Riddler in the next Batman, although it’d be hard to top Heath as the villain, and I’m a little hairy for tights. I’m using this article as an ad. Chris, call me, I’ll do anything. I could be a great character — or some weird little man in the background in Arkham Asylum.”
It would certainly have been fun to see Williams apply his talents to one of the many villains in the Batman universe. But unfortunately it never happened.
Which of all the Batman villains do you wish Robin Williams had the chance to play?
