Jeffrey Wright has pushed back against criticism of his casting as Commissioner Jim Gordon in The Batman, calling the backlash “f–ing racist and stupid.”
In a recent interview with Collider, the American Fiction star addressed complaints from some viewers who objected to a Black actor portraying Gotham City’s police commissioner. Wright dismissed the criticism as baseless.
I really find it fascinating the ways in which there’s such a conversation, and I think even more of a conversation now, about Black characters in these roles. It’s just so fucking racist and stupid. It’s just so blind in a way that I find revealing to not recognize that the evolution of these films reflects the evolution of society, that somehow it’s defiling this franchise not to keep it grounded in the cultural reality of 1939 when the comic books were first published. It’s just the dumbest thing. It’s absent all logic.
Wright said.
Wright emphasized that Batman’s longevity is due to the character being “open-ended,” allowing each generation of filmmakers to reinterpret the story.
I feel that I own these stories as much as anyone. Perhaps now, because I’m a part of them, I have the most skin in the game. [Batman creators] Bob Kane and Bill Finger are two Jewish guys up in the Bronx, imagining heroes and villains in a city that looked like the city around them at the time, but I think what they imagined was open-ended. I think that the success and the longevity of these stories and characters are owing to the openness of their imaginations and what they created.
he said.
Wright will return as Commissioner Gordon in director Matt Reeves’ sequel, The Batman: Part II, which is scheduled to release on October 1, 2027, after multiple delays. The script was recently completed.
In a separate interview with Entertainment Weekly, DC Studios co-head James Gunn addressed frustration over the postponements, defending Reeves’ process.
Listen, we’re supposed to get a script in June. I hope that happens. We feel really good about it. People should get off Matt [Reeves’] nuts because it’s like, let the guy write the screenplay in the amount of time he needs to write it. That’s just the way it is. He doesn’t owe you something because you like his movie. I mean, you like his movie because of Matt. So let Matt do things the way he does.
Gunn said
Source: Variety