Paul Dano Couldn’t Sleep

While Filming ‘The Batman’

Due to Playing a ‘Terrifying’
Riddler
"What I felt was the opportunity that Matt
[Reeves] was giving with a villain in this film
was more real, potentially more terrifying."

Samantha Bergeson
Feb 18, 2022 7:00 pm

Paul Dano
Gregorio Binuya/Everett Collection

Paul Dano’s first foray into the superhero

world has been a long time coming.

“[I was] waiting for the right one or ones,

where you’re in collaboration with people
and material that excites you,” the
“Prisoners” star told Entertainment Weekly
about signing on to “The Batman,” in
theaters March 4. “I was totally surprised,
frankly, that [the script] was so good. I felt
immediately [on] page one, page two, you
could tell that the director [Matt Reeves]
was seeing the film that they wrote. You
could feel, even in the action scenes, the
type of energy behind the fighting or the
violence, it was just very fully conceived.”

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So well-conceived, in fact, that Dano

couldn’t shake his serial killer alter ego, The
Riddler, during production.

“There were some nights around that I

probably didn’t sleep as well as I would’ve
wanted to just because it was a little hard to
come down from this character,” Dano said.
“It takes a lot of energy to get there. And so
you almost have to sustain it once you’re
there because going up and down is kind of
hard.”

Dano added, “What I felt was the

opportunity that Matt [Reeves] was giving
with a villain in this film was more real,
potentially more terrifying.”

The transformation into the Riddler also

added to Dano’s physical restlessness, after
the star suggested covering himself in
plastic wrap since the criminal mastermind
would go to extreme measures to not leave
DNA at a crime scene.

“My head was just throbbing with heat,”

Dano said of taking off the Riddler costume.
“I went home that night, after the first full
day in that, and I almost couldn’t sleep
because I was scared of what was happening
to my head. It was like compressed from the
sweat and the heat and the lack of oxygen. It
was a crazy feeling.”

And despite Reeves’ Riddler paralleling the

real-life Zodiac Killer, Dano took his own
path when embodying the comic book
character opposite Robert Pattinson’s
Batman.

“I always felt instinctually that the Riddler is

just so much more than that in terms of his
intent and purpose, so I didn’t get too into
the Zodiac Killer, frankly,” Dano said. “One
thing Matt and I spoke about immediately
was the two sides of trauma. Bruce Wayne,
as a child, experiences this trauma and the
Batman is born of that. Sometimes we can
take our scars or whatever you want to call
it, and that can be fuel for a fire that drives
one towards greatness at times. There’s
another side of that coin, where those
traumas, scars, and pains drive you in
another direction. And I thought that was
really powerful in the script. I thought that
the sense of good and evil was not as black
and white as it often is in a superhero film.
And I thought those gray areas were really
exciting.”

Writer-director Reeves noted The Riddler in

“The Batman” is an omnipresent “ghost”
who uses anonymity to his advantage.

“The Batman”
Jonathan Olley / © Warner Bros. / Courtesy Everett Collection

“When I came up with the idea that the

Riddler would be sending correspondence to
Batman, [what] was captivating to me was if
you’re a character whose mode is to work as
a symbol, be anonymous, to come out of the
shadows, nobody is supposed to know who
you are; your power comes from the fact
that you’re anonymous,” Reeves said. “The
flip side of that is that by withholding the
Riddler, he had more power, he was more
unsettling. He felt like a ghost throughout
the whole movie, this kind of presence that
you never knew where he would show up
and how he was affecting things. And that
that mystery would put Batman in a very
vulnerable position because he didn’t
understand from where and how and what
the Riddler was acting.”

“The Batman” is rated PG-13 but still

embraces the “psychological turmoil” for its
characters, be they heroes, villains, or
something in between.

“It’s funny to be in something that has this

much fan culture and fervor around it,”
Dano said. “And to my surprise, I’m really
enjoying it. Seeing what Matt was doing,
what the camera was doing, and Rob out the
window…It just felt like, ‘F—, this is making
a movie. Like capital M movie.'”

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THIS ARTICLE IS RELATED TO: Film and tagged

Matt Reeves, Paul Dano, The Batman

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