Joker Director Reveals A-List Folie À Deux Cameo That Never Was

This article contains spoilers for Joker: Folie À Deux.

Joker director Todd Phillips has admitted he had big plans for an A-list cameo in the sequel Folie À Deux, but wasn’t able to make it work.

Anyone who’s already seen the divisive film will know it makes several references to a supposedly “terrible” TV movie based on Arthur Fleck’s story.

Speaking to IGN, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker revealed he did intend to include snippets of this in Folie À Deux, which would have seen Justin Theroux (who played fictitious actor Ethan Chase in the first Joker movie) playing Arthur in the film-within-a-film.

However, he claimed that time restraints meant this couldn’t go ahead.

Asked about who would play Arthur in the TV movie, Todd explained: “Well, Justin Theroux of course. In fact, I talked to Justin about it.

“We were going to shoot a trailer at one point. We just ran out of time. Yes, [as] ‘Ethan Chase’, the actor from the first movie.”

When Folie À Deux premiered at the Venice Film Festival last month, it initially received a somewhat mixed response, although that his skewed more negatively since more critics have seen the film.

Since its release, Todd has also spoken out about the meaning behind the Joker: Folie À Deux ending, revealing it was partly a response to one criticism of the first movie.

He’s also set the record straight on whether he’d be up for directing a third Joker film, or a stand-alone Harley Quinn project.

Joker: Folie À Deux is in cinemas now.