'Batman: Caped Crusader' Cast Announced, Led By Hamish Linklater As Batman
Tucker brings his Batman, Diedrich Bader, in for a new role, alongside Jamie Chung and Christina Ricci
Thursday turned out to be quite the news day for DC Comics-based television. The CW gave Superman & Lois a double-episode premiere date for its final season, Max released a second teaser for its The Batman spinoff series, The Penguin and Prime Video finally revealed the voice cast for Batman: Caped Crusader, the series premiering August 1 they rescued last March after Max scrapped it in August 2022.
Things had been kept so quiet about the series in the over three years since it was announced in May 2021 that even the stars didn’t know their co-stars. And they’ve seen all the finished episodes (at least for season 1 it sounds like). The actors recorded their lines separately, partly due to the production process beginning at the end of the pandemic lockdowns. The belief that the late Kevin Conroy originally took up the cowl before his November 2022 death for what would’ve been his third series regular iteration wasn’t put down until this past January. Now it can be revealed that Hamish Linklater, the spooky Father Paul from Midnight Mass is voicing Bruce Wayne and Batman. It proved to be something very difficult to keep from his kids. “I never in a million bajillion years imagined that I would actually get the part. Not only had I never been cast to do voiceover work before this, but also—it’s Batman! You don’t go from zero to Mount Olympus,” Linklater says. “Then I got the call and I screamed so loud. I just ran and grabbed my kids and was just like, ‘Dad’s Batman!’” The actor is probably also known for starring with now-Marvel alums Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Clark Gregg, as Christine’s brother Matthew on the CBS sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine. After Midnight Mass, he further appeared in miniseries Angelyne, Gaslit, and Manhunter. It does turn out that Linklater has comic book TV experience as Clark Debussy in 14 episodes of FX’s X-Men-rooted series Legion.
It’s something he has in common with the actress voicing Harley Quinn in the series, Jamie Chung. It is her Harleen described as a brilliant psychiatrist to some of Gotham’s elite with a personable and bubbly demeanor. However, as Harley Quinn, she is a different person, entirely. A creepy, quiet, calculating menace who secretly dispenses her twisted justice to the truly despicable among her elite clientele, capturing and manipulating them. She chose her villainy on her own instead of by her association with The Joker, who is not in her life just yet. “You have the psychiatrist that is really bubbly, and seems like she really cares about her clients, but she’s kind of like a Robin Hood. She treats some of the elites in Gotham, but she takes it upon herself to bring justice in her own way,” describes Chung, who boasts giving Harleen and Harley different voices. “It’s kind of creepy. They really wanted [Harley Quinn] to be very menacing—a bit more quiet and calculating. In a weird way, she’s like a dominatrix. You’re in all this pain and yet she’s telling you what to do, and ‘You’ve been a bad boy…’” Instead of her usual alternative love interest, Poison Ivy, this Harley, actually the Harleen side of her’s got something going on with Gotham City detective Renee Montoya, whose integrity as a by-the-book honest cop tempers her girlfriend’s more vicious Harley leanings, and lead to frequent reconsiderations. Montoya however doesn’t know her girlfriend’s criminal second life. What keeps Harley going is that she considers the cops ineffective and ineffectual. “The idea of putting them together was something that seemed kind of natural,” Timm says. “We figured, as a psychiatrist, her clientele are some of the richest, most powerful men in Gotham City, and they dump all of their crap on her. It’s driving her crazy. She hears all this stuff, but because of psychiatrist-client privilege, she can’t do anything about it. She can’t tell anybody. We figured some of these guys have probably confessed some really horrible things to her, and she’s just like, ‘Well, I can’t just turn this guy loose out on the streets, but I can’t turn him into the cops either.’” The Once Upon a Time and Big Hero 6 alumnus, Chung also starred as Clarice Fong aka Blink on Fox’s The Gifted. Her DC resume already has some depth, with six episodes on Gotham as Valerie Vale, voicing Jade Nguyen in Batman: Soul of the Dragon, and Black Canary Dinah Lance in Justice League x RWBY: Super Heroes & Huntsmen Part Two.
As both a spiritual successor to Batman: The Animated Series and a series intended for Cartoon Network’s Acme Night when it was intended to develop into a family viewing block more than a movie slot, the aim is broader than just kids. Showrunners Bruce Timm and James Tucker first worked together on Batman Beyond, and the latter went on to Batman: The Brave and the Bold and Harley Quinn. While Timm gets to push the envelope further than he was able to in the DCAU, Tucker gets to finally do a noir story after working on so many other iterations where this hasn’t been done before, all while bringing his Batman, Diedrich Bader, to a new role: Gotham City district attorney Harvey Dent, the eventual villain Two-Face. This version starts Harvey as corrupt pre-disfigurement and using his position to help wealthy crooks avoid accountability. Instead of the burn scars turning him maniacal, Timm explains “We thought, Well, what if he starts off as kind of a schnook? And then when he gets his face disfigured, for the first time in his life he actually feels empathy for other people”. Essentially, he becomes the type who gains empathy for the less-privileged and disabled only after ending up in their situation.
Christina Ricci is voicing Catwoman, thanks in part due to some of her most famous roles, whether it was playing Wednesday Addams in the Barry Sonnenfeld The Addams Family movies back in the day or more recently Misty in Yellowjackets. Ricci’s performance, playing up the playful and sinister, offbeat and unstable is a throwback to the femme fatales of the film noir era this Batman series is set in, with a bit of the brassy self-determination of Carole Lombard’s screwball comedy characters. “There’s something going on there and he doesn’t really know how to deal with it,” Timm says. “Our Batman is closed off emotionally, all the way down to the ground. We jokingly kept saying throughout the show that he makes Mr. Spock look like the life of the party. As much as he tries to tamp down all of his emotions, [Catwoman] throws him off. He becomes obsessed with catching her and putting her away in prison just so he can kind of stop thinking about her.” He goes on to describe this Kyle as lighter and “flightier” than he perceives her to have been in more recent appearances.
The voices for Montoya nor Jim Gordon nor Basil Karlo aka Clayface, who were showcased in the first look images, have not been revealed. However, a pool of voice actors with unrevealed roles has, and they are (with more teased): Mckenna Grace, Paul Scheer, Minnie Driver, Eric Morgan Stuart, Michelle C. Bonilla, Krystal Joy Brown, John DiMaggio, Jason Watkins, Tom Kenny, Reid Scott, Gary Anthony Williams, Dan Donohue, David Krumholtz, Haley Joel Osment, and Toby Stephens. Maybe they’re in there (I’m leaning toward Williams for Gordon), but we’ll find out sometime in the next six weeks. A second season for Batman: Caped Crusader has been in the cards since day 1, but don’t expect that until 2025, since there’d be only 4 months of 2024 left after all 10 first season episodes drop August 1.
Source: Vanity Fair