Huesario.

Tras una rompedora introducción en la premiere de la S2 de "Gotham", la actriz Jessica Lucas realmente va a meterse en el papel de 'Tabitha Galavan' en el episodio de la próxima semana, un personaje basado en la asesina de DC Comics 'Tigress', que aterrorizará la ciudad con su hermano 'Theo' (James Frain).

“Ella es la sicaria en ese dúo de Theo y Tabitha,” dice Lucas, añadiendo que el productor ejecutivo Danny Cannon ya ha comparado al letal personaje enfundado en cuero con otro de los puntales femeninos de TV. “Él específicamente dijo que ella iba a ser como Jennifer Garner en Alias, y que sería de armas tomar y que tendría cosas realmente geniales. Eso realmente me emocionó.”

Además, Lucas está encantada por interpretar lo que es básicamente el primer borrador de la villana de DC Comics. “Ella no es Tigress aún, y lo que adoro de la serie es que es más sobre esta gente antes de que se conviertan en esos personajes icónicos,” dice. “Estamos explorando quién es ella como individuo primero, y ni siquiera sé cuándo emergerá Tigress. Por ahora, ella es sólo Tabitha.”

Y en el episodio del próximo lunes, los espectadores verán lo mucho que no hay que meterse con Tabitha, cuando la banda de maníacos de Theo se meten en una situación en la que sólo un experto tirador con un frío corazón puede resolver. Y en cuanto a qué es lo que motiva la vendetta de los Galavans contra Gotham, esperad una lenta revelación. “No es hasta los episodios 4 ó 5 que empezamos a entender su historia con la ciudad, quiénes eran su familia, y cuáles son sus verdaderas intenciones. Su historia es básicamente de venganza,” revela Lucas. Hasta entonces, tendremos que prepararnos para el calor que se va cociendo entre Tabitha y la recientemente fugada del Arkham Asylum Barbara Kean (Erin Richards). “Ella definitivamente toma a Barbara bajo su ala y hay también un poco más,” adelanta Lucas. “Quizá un poco más de un triángulo amoroso.”

http://www.tvinsider.com/article/41956/ ... ara-photo/?

La serie “Gotham” de la Fox ha contratado a la estrella de “Looking” Raul Castillo para interpretar al villano de DC Comics 'Eduardo Flamingo'.

Haciendo du debut en el episodio 2.09, Eduardo Flamingo es uno de los más peligrosos asesinos a sueldo de Gotham. El matar para él no es sólo un trabajo, es una forma de arte. Armado con una cadena de pinchos y su apetito por la carne, este asesino rockabilly probará el ser uno de los más complicados enemigos del Detective Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie).

Flamingo apareció por primera vez a Grant Morrison y "Batman" #666 de Andy Kubert. En los cómics, es un asesino sin emociones que se come la cara de sus víctimas tras asesinarlas. Un asesino maestro, es competente en todo tipo de armas de fuego pero prefiere una cadena de pinchos.

A Castillo se le podrá ver próximamente en el especial de la HBO de “Looking”l, que dará cierre a la recientemente cancelada serie, y la película original de Netflix “Special Correspondents,” escrita y dirigida por Ricky Gervais. También ha completado recientemente la poducción de películas independientes de “Staring in the Sun” y “Sweets” y será co-protagonista de, “Celestina” y “Finding Albie Finch.”



http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/gotham- ... 201602734/

Erin Richards sobre el giro diabólico de Barbara: 'La oscuridad siempre estuvo en ella'
Por Matt Webb Mitovich / 28 Septiembre 2015, 9:20 AM PDT

As if her scenes in Gotham‘s Season 2 premiere alone did not make this crystal clear, Erin Richards has found that it is oh-so-good to be oh-so-bad.

“This season is so much funner for me,” the Welsh actress raves of Barbara Kean’s full-on embracing of her wicked side in the wake of her parents’ tragic death and her acrimonious split from fiance Jim Gordon (played by Ben McKenzie). “I’m having loads more to do!”

Was it always Gotham‘s plan for the onetime socialite to head down this path? “I think they either were going to kill me or do this, basically,” Richards ventures. “And we like this! She and Jim were close in terms of they were going to get married, so something needed to happen, for Jim. And I’m glad they went this direction.”

Richards acknowledges that the Fox drama took “a pretty swift turn” with Barbara, who in short order segued from a rekindled affair Major Crimes detective Renee Montoya into a torrid alliance with serial slayer Jason Lennon aka The Ogre. “But that darkness that you saw at the end of the first [season] was always in her,” she posits.

What’s more, Richards has herself undergone a similar turnabout, in her own life.

“I haven’t killed my parents,” she says with a(n extremely reassuring) laugh, “but I’ve had an experience where within one year I’ve changed completely as a person, and that had more to do with meditation and all that kind of stuff. So I know that that is possible, in that you can be pretending to be someone — which is totally fine, it’s what everybody does. We’re always told, ‘You should have a husband and a family and a house and a car, blah blah blah,’ and that’s what Barbara was doing. And suddenly Lennon came and showed her, ‘No. You can be totally free. You don’t need those things.’ And that’s how I feel, as Erin. I feel free in the world.”

But whereas Jason Lennon firmly nudged Barbara in this direction, her role in her parents’ brutal murder — coupled with Season 2 newcomer Theo Galavan (James Frain) recruiting her as one of his band of “Maniax” — has cemented her place among Gotham villainy. “Once you kill your parents, you cannot go any darker or lower,” the actress notes. “So she just got let out into the world, like, ‘There you go! You can now go and do absolutely anything you want, because you already did the worst thing.'”

Of course, as seen in the season premiere, Barbara — like any proper psychopath — “thinks she’s fine. She’s not crazy!” her portrayer reminds with a smile. “She just got some scores to settle. She’s got ‘issues,’ as she says.” As such, she does believe that she and Jim can be together again some day, some way, in some dark place.

“She definitely loves Jim, and she definitely wants him back. But I think it’s more like she wants to bring him into the darkness of where she is,” says Richards. “She sees who he really is, so she’s kind of angered that he’s playing this ‘role’ [of do-right lawman], like, ‘No, I know who you really are, so I’m going to get you back and we’ll go into this dark place together.”

But how far will Barbara go in the name of that objective? After all, in this week’s episode, she stands idly by as her ex-fiance gets the bloody hell beaten out of him (while even worse fates are visited upon those he works with).

“She doesn’t want him dead. Yet,” Richards says. “But as for lines that she won’t cross…. Mmm, I don’t think killing is out of the question!”


http://tvline.com/2015/09/28/gotham-sea ... -darkness/

Monaghan se rie más fuerte sobre el futuro 'Joker' de "Gotham"
Por Bryan Cairns 28 Septiembre, 2015

As Jerome Valeska, Cameron Monaghan, is getting the last laugh on "Gotham."

After being convicted for murdering his promiscuous mother, the homicidal maniac was locked up with the rest of the crazies in Arkham Asylum. However, on the series' Season 2 premiere, billionaire industrialist Theo Galavan broke Jerome and five other inmates out from their incarceration, encouraging them to bring panic and pandemonium to the streets of Gotham City. Viewers have speculated that Jerome will one day become Batman's arch-nemesis, the Joker, speculation happily fueled by the series'; creators, cast members and Monaghan himself.

But will the Rise of the Villains provide the push Jerome needs in order to fulfill his theorized destiny? Following last week's episode, Monaghan opened up to CBR News about Jerome's lust for violence, and his warped sense of humor. We discuss why the young criminal is targeting Jim Gordon, what it was like encountering Bruce Wayne for the first time -- and the work that has gone into bringing the Joker's maniacal laugh to life.

CBR News: As there have been numerous incarnations of the Joker, what were some of the defining traits you wanted to incorporate into Jerome, and which ones did you want to stay away from?

Cameron Monaghan: The driving trait from the scripts this year was his sense of humor. I just wanted to make people laugh and feel uncomfortable at what they were laughing at. That's the core of who this guy is. As for things I was avoiding, that's such a difficult thing to say. I feel like everything has its appreciation in the correct context.

How has your interpretation or understanding of Jerome evolved since his debut in "The Blind Fortune Teller?"

Obviously, he's much more aggressive in the second season. The scope is broadening, and he's becoming more confident. He's starting to strike out and accomplish more. That's something we'll see more over the next few episodes, is his rising and embracing his lust for violence and appreciating it in a way that he's never had the chance to before. It was just figuring out the showmanship of the character and how to embrace that aspect of him. He loves the limelight. That was something that was fun to explore.

The Joker has never truly been a team player, so if Jerome is indeed destined to become the iconic villain, what does he make of Theo and Tabitha?

In many ways, Theo inspires Jerome because he's never seen someone fully take the reins in deciding to do bad in this capacity. He admires that about Galavan. Jerome sees him as a bit of a mentor, just because he's never experienced something like that before.

As for him being a team player, I think you'll see that might not be something in Jerome's vocabulary. He's a guy who would spell "team" with an "i."

One thing we know for certain is that Jerome isn't afraid to get blood on his hands. How crazy and violent will he get this season?

This season is "The Rise of the Villains," and the first few episodes are really the rise of Jerome. He sees Jim Gordon as this emblem or paradigm of law and order, all the things Jerome resents and wants to destroy. He wants to make an example of Jim. He wants to inspire madness within the city. He wants everyone on the same page. Jerome has gone from committing a crime of passion to full-on acts of violence and terror.

As we've seen in the teasers, Jerome invades G.C.P.D. headquarters in tonight's episode. How much of that is a personal strike against Jim Gordon as opposed to a strategic move?

I think most of it is a personal strike. Strategy comes secondary to Jerome. He just likes chaos, and he likes destroying things. He does things based on that more than any plan he has.

This week also sees Jerome and Bruce Wayne have their first run-in. What kind of impression do they leave on each other?

It's hard to say without giving stuff away. It's something I am looking forward to. It's already cool to be in a scene with Bruce Wayne, and David [Mazouz] does such an awesome job with the character. It's cool to have these two strong personalities, these two iconic characters, meeting within a scene. It's not fully fleshed out into what it may one day be. It's something that's going to excite a lot of people.

At the end of the day, what does Jerome want? Is he doing all of this for kicks?

I think he wants everything to burn. If he had his way, he would continue to destroy everything around him for as long as possible. He's this burning fire that is rapidly expanding in all ways. Jerome enjoys the act of destruction. Beyond that, I'm not sure he has anything specific in mind.

What else can viewers expect from Jerome over the next few weeks?

The second act is him stepping on the stage for the first time. The third episode is where he really becomes the ringleader. He becomes fully comfortable on the stage. We fully see him at the height of what he's doing and what he wants.

The prevailing theory is that Jerome and the Joker are the same person, and, reportedly, you were told as much when you were first offered the role. With that perception in the air, how do you approach the character?

I think of him as Jerome. At the end of the day, I have to attach to what is tangible right now. What's important to note is that he's representative of the idea of who the Joker is -- the spirit, the lunacy and the enjoyment of chaos and laughing at other people's pain. In many ways, right now, for our show, the Joker is more of an overarching concept. That's really important to recognize.

We previously chatted about you practicing the laugh in your apartment. Have you fine tuned it for this arc?

Yes -- it was just a matter of using it over and over and over again. The thing is, I had a decent amount of time between the seasons where I got to expand on that. I got to not only practice the laugh, but try to embody the character in any way I could besides staring in the mirror and making faces all day. I was also studying films or compiling music. I compiled this massive playlist that I listened to over and over again. I would take dance lessons, just because Jerome is such a performer, so I wanted to be doing something that felt like I was performing with my body and becoming comfortable in that aspect.

Hypothetically, should Jerome go full-blown Joker, would you like him to experience the vat of chemicals origin, or have his appearance be the result of makeup?

I don't know if it needs to be "A" or "B" -- it could be a "C" of some sort. We're in our own canon in "Gotham," and that gives us a unique ability to be able to do things people haven't seen before. Sometimes people are against change, but that's what is great about comics. With every run, with every book and writer and artist, it's always completely different. They introduce new ideas to something that is old and sacred and has been around for 75 years. It's important to continue injecting new ideas and not stagnate. I don't think it has to be either of those two options. It could be, but I don't think it has to be.


http://www.comicbookresources.com/artic ... ture-joker

Bruno Heller dice que la Season 2 de "Gotham" aprende de los erroeres y los éxitos de la primera temporada
Por Lucas Siegel 28/09/2015

The second season of Gotham is underway, and the show has found new life with a faster pace, more character work, and a focus on longer story arcs that play with the serialized nature of the show. Both cast and crew have been quick to point out the latter; as they think it has improved the show.

That was the centerpiece of an extensive conversation ComicBook.com had with Bruno Heller, the showrunner of Gotham. After the season premiere that established the new status quo, we talked with Heller about the new tone of the show, and the challenges – good and bad – of working with the huge and varied DC Comics mythology.

We’ve already run the part of the conversation from last week where Heller told us that the Court of Owls, a relatively new addition to DC mythos, is on their way to Gotham, but here is the rest of the talk in full, and why he thinks the show is “more Gotham” than season one was.

I’ve heard from a couple of your actors, especially Drew Powell who has worked with you before, that season two feels much more like it’s a “Bruno Heller” show. Do you agree, and if so, why do you think that is?

Bruno Heller: I don’t know about a Bruno Heller show, but on a show with the scope and ambition that we started with on this show, it takes some time. To put it another way, everyone has a plan until the first punch is thrown, and then you’re reacting. With a show like this, the first season is very much a shakeout of what works and what doesn’t, and how to tell these stories. It’s not a procedural show where you take a formula to start with, and the formula works and you just repeat it.

This second season is very much more focused, and playing to what we discovered the strengths of the show are. In that sense, it’s not more “Bruno Heller,” it’s more “Gotham.” Certainly, I feel we are much more in control of the storytelling this season, because we know how to tell the stories, what the rhythm of the show is, what the best aspects of the characters are, and what’s fun to do. We know what doesn’t play as well, also. We’re very thankful and blessed to have a second season. Everyone starts feeling at home and the actors own their characters; it’s much easier to write to the people as opposed to writing a general sense of the character. Now we know who they are and what their strengths are.

To a degree on the contrary, season two is much more of a collaborate effort. There’s much more input from the actors, there’s more director’s input into it, and it’s everyone working together.

Very interesting. Likewise, when I was on set a couple of weeks ago, the cast universally agreed that the season 2 premiere was virtually a second pilot. After you seemed to get the serialized nature during those last four episodes of season one where you really expanded the story; what about it worked so well that you wanted to carry over into season 2?

BH: Yeah, it’s as much learning from mistakes as it is learning from successes. We realized that we had to - season one had so many great stories to tell, and we tried to tell too many stories. This season, we’re able to sharpen the focus. It’s almost just a matter of airtime! People need to live in the stories for longer. You need to pay far more attention to the emotional weight of storylines instead of just going through a checklist.

Here’s the thing, from a writing perspective, there are so many wonderful moments in the DC mythology that you have to pay attention to. It’s an embarrassment of riches! For instance, discovering the cave underneath Wayne Manor, that’s not something you can just do as a plot point. It’s a huge moment in that young man’s life.

The other side of it, it’s true, every season will start with an episode that feels like the pilot, the start of a new era, because that’s the epic scale of the story that we’re telling. There are so many momentous, mythical things that happen to these characters that you have to take it that way. To a degree, the speed at which modern drama burns through story is antithetical to telling this kind of mythic, historic, epic story. We need to take a step back and give the stories the weight that they really need.

Mythology is a very different kind of storytelling from pure fiction, if you can make that distinction between them. Pure invention, which to a degree is most shows, you’re introducing characters you haven’t met before. With these stories, it’s like telling someone stories about their mum and dad. It’s your own family. So you need to give the emotional weight with that kind of familiarity and closeness and passion that people have for these characters. You need to give them the weight that expectation deserves. That’s really what we learned about, working through the first season and into the second season.

I was also told that the season is being split fairly evenly in two, at eleven episodes, then eleven episodes – is that just a functional split, or will we be introduced to a new storyarc in the spring?

BH: Well, the whole season is one great story, but there’s a natural break. It’s like, I don’t know if you saw the original Lawrence of Arabia, but after episode 11, it’s sort of like the intermission. You can go get some candy at the concession stand and have a pee, and come back for the second half.

There are suspenseful elements that will roll over into the second half of the season. Episode 11 has a very pleasing climax, but then also asks a lot of questions about the second half of the season. It’s the best of both worlds, I hope.

There’s a lot of speculation by fans and by writers like myself about the show, about individual characters; what does that sort of conversation do for you? What do you think of all that?

BH: It’s nothing but a blessing. It’s an honor and a privilege to work on something that already has such cultural weight. We’re both climbing on the backs of giants and trying to live up to the epic scale of storytelling that has gone before us. The beautiful thing about a show like this is that it’s part of a much longer conversation that will go on long after the show is gone. Batman and the DC mythology, and that universe will live on. So to a degree, good or bad, it’s a privilege just to be part of that conversation.

I listen to what everyone says with as much humility as possible. Nobody on this show, least of all me, owns these creations. We’re borrowing, being allowed to play with these wonderful characters and wonderful storylines. Everyone’s opinion is legitimate and has been valid and has to be listened to. That’s one of those skills in my particular job that you have to learn early and well: You’re not writing poetry for yourself. You’re not even writing movies where, once you’ve done it, you present it to the audience and walk away. Here, it’s very much about the interplay between what we’re doing and what the audience would like to see, and how they react. So we listen intensely to what the audience is saying, because it’s a very engaged and knowledgeable audience. We would be foolish to dismiss criticisms as being off the reservation, because it’s all about the audience. The joy of working in this area where you really feel you’re part of this communal theater, you’re creating it with the audience, that’s the best part of TV. You’re constantly engaged, you don’t just put it out there and hope for the best.


http://comicbook.com/2015/09/28/bruno-h ... successes/

Una Q&A con el BRUCE WAYNE de GOTHAM, David Mazouz
Por Dan Greenfield 28 Septiembre, 2015

He plays a billionaire on TV … but can’t even play Arkham Knight …

When I was 14, whenever I put on a suit, I imagined I was Bruce Wayne, out for a night on the town.

David Mazouz pretty much does the same thing, except it’s his job — he plays Bruce Wayne before millions every Monday night on Gotham on Fox.

I paid a visit to faux Gotham City at Brooklyn’s Steiner Studios recently and had a chance to talk to Young Master David — in, as it turned out, the newly discovered cave under Stately Wayne Manor.

The funny thing about talking to David is that at first you think you’re talking to someone close to your own age.

Until he laughs, that is. And you realize that’s his mother standing nearby …

Dan Greenfield: Now, you’re how old?

David Mazouz: 14.

Dan: OK, you’re 14. Do you realize that more than half the men in America have wanted to be Bruce Wayne at one time in their lives and you get to be Bruce Wayne? Does that ever occur to you?

David: (Laughs) It’s pretty cool. Yeah.

Dan: Have you met any of the other actors who’ve played Bruce Wayne over the years?

David: I haven’t, actually. No. It’s an incredible list and I would be truly honored to… but I haven’t.

Dan: Who of them would you most want to meet?

David: Well, for me… I was alive when Christian Bale was in theaters… So he has a little bit of an advantage. When I think of Batman, that’s who I think of. That will soon change because of Ben Affleck but as of now, probably Christian Bale.

Dan: How often do you beg them to just let you wear a cape around the set?

David: Every day! (Laughs)

Dan: Obviously your folks are around and everybody loves their parents. Now, do you ever have a fight with them and just simply say, “I’m right because I’m Batman?”

David: (Laughs) I haven’t done that, no, but you just put an idea into my head!

Dan: All right! Now, you’ve got an action figure coming, right?

David: I… I didn’t know that!

Dan: Don’t you? I would think. I mean, look, you’ve gotta get on that. Other cast members are getting action figures so if you don’t know about that, you’ve gotta start asking your agent, “Where’s my action figure?”

Dan: Now, do you read any comics, or…?

David: Yeah! I’m a huge fan.

Dan: All right, well, what do you read?

David: I just finished Injustice, that comic book based on that game. Gods Among Us. It’s great!

Dan: Now, do you play video games?

David: I do.

Dan: Do you play Arkham?

David: I actually don’t. I have a PS3.

Dan: Waaaaait a minute. A billionaire like you and you can’t get an XBOX One?

David: (Laughs) No.

Dan: You see, this is where you go to your parents and say, “I’m Batman.” You’ve gotta be able to practice your moves on Arkham Knight.

David: (Laughing) Yeah, well… I’ll take it up with them later.

Dan: OK. What are you most looking forward to this season?

David: I’m looking forward to the new approach that Bruce takes toward everybody that he meets. I think last year Bruce was very honest and straightforward whereas he’s gonna quickly learn in Season 2 that he can’t be that way. It’s a game of manipulation, it’s a game of corruption, and it’s a game that he has to learn how to play.

Dan: Now, I haven’t checked your birth certificate. Are you sure you’re only 14?

David: (Laughs) Yes.

Dan: Cuz I’m not sure you’re only 14 because you sound like you’re about my age.

David: Thank you!

—

And as I was leaving the cave, what was the last thing I heard?

His mother turn to him and say, “You are not getting an XBOX…”


http://13thdimension.com/a-qa-with-goth ... id-mazouz/

Cómo Robin Lord Taylor de ‘Gotham’ es como el villano Pingüino
Por Chris Hayner at 01:09 PM 28 Sep, 2015

With “Gotham’s” “Rise of the Villains” set to take Oswald Cobblepot to even higher highs — and likely some desperate lows — star Robin Lord Taylor is in for a rollercoaster of a season on the FOX series.

Even still, there’s a lot more going on in the life of the actor outside the walls of the Bronx buildings that house the “Gotham” sets. Zap2it sat down with Taylor in a New York City coffee shop to discuss the evolution of not only his character, but himself since becoming the breakout star of the series.

This is the second half of a two-art interview with Taylor. You can read the first part here.

Zap2it: In walking around the ‘Gotham’ sets, it’s easy to revisit the beginning of Season 1 in your mind to see how much everything and everyone has changed. However, nobody’s quite as different now as Oswald.

Robin Lord Taylor: Back then was when he was working for Fish and holding the umbrella, he beats up his first dude in the alley. He’s finding his way, growing up in that world.

When I love the most about episode seven is we find out that the scene in the pilot on the pier where Penguin is convincing Gordon (Ben McKenzie) to save him that had already been set into motion through Falcone (John Doman), which was really one of my favorites.

Someone recently asked me what my favorite machination is that the Penguin had over the season and that’s my number one. It makes the pilot make sense otherwise you think about it. Why the f*** wouldn’t Bullock just put a bullet in my head? He had every opportunity to.

You understand why Gordon wouldn’t kill him but Bullock is kind of a scumbag.

Yeah and he hates Penguin. There’s no working together. He sees him like a bug sort of. But by the finale he’s involved and come into power. He’s the King of Gotham.

Where I relate to that progression is just weirdly … I’m not the ‘King of New York City’ in any regard but the thing where it ties to me or that I identify with his [arc], I’ve spent years trying to get to this point in my life. Then you get there and you think that you spent so many years focused on just being a series regular on a show and just getting any TV show and if I do that and all of my problems will be solved.

And yes, lots of problems are solved and life is infinitely better in this position than it was before, but it doesn’t solve all the problems. It’s new problems that arise and problems that you realize were always there percolate back up. Life still happens and anxiety still exists, in some ways greater and in some ways lesser.

Tying that to Oswald, that’s where he is now. He’s got it. He did it. He achieved what he’s always wanted but nothing prepares you for how to maintain that going into the season that’s going to be his main struggle.

He has to learn a whole new skill set. The way he’s operated up until now has been behind-the-scenes, low-profile, finding things about people to use against them. It’s all been under the table though, being unassuming and playing up his weaknesses so hopefully people underestimate him.

That s*** doesn’t fly when you’re the King of Gotham. So he has to adapt to that.

That’s where I identify with it, personally. Your identity changes. Who you are as a person changes when your status changes. Figuring out who you are and how you’re going to navigate with this whole new skill set, you know?

It’s an evolution of him as a person in Gotham City.

So the changes that you’re facing in your life as a result of the show, does it help you understand Oswald’s thought process?

Oh yes, very much. All of us on the show, the way we’re approaching it — really trying to understand these characters as people and really trying to stay true to Batman.

One of the things about Batman that we always cling to is it’s not supernatural. Gravity still exists, physics still exists. It delves into the psychology and how these regular people became these iconic characters. It makes it so much easier for me to come to set and bring that internal conflict inside of him now that I understand him so much better.

It must be a completely different experience than a show or movie where you don’t really have that connection to the characters. You can tell, in looking at ‘Gotham,’ the characters come to life in a way you don’t see sometimes.

Give it up to [executive producers] Bruno [Heller], Danny [Cannon], John [Stephens] and our writers. Especially now that we don’t have to adhere to this procedural thing. It’s really about these people and that’s the primary focus this season.

As actors, that’s the most fun to play and really delve into. When the conflicts are bigger and lasts over multiple episodes, as opposed to here’s this guy we’re going to have to deal with and he’ll be gone at the end of the episode. It doesn’t resonate as deeply when you don’t spend as much time with it.

What’s really interesting is, in a way, ‘Gotham’ is a lot like ‘Bates Motel.’ It’s very hard to figure out what year it’s happening in. You’ll see old box cars from the ’80s, then somebody will have a flip phone.

Yeah and you’ve seen the GCPD set, filled with these old giant IBM computers and typewriters. The only thing that’s missing are cigarettes. If we could, it really should be like full-on ‘Mad Men.’

I see a typewriter from the ’70s and the first thing that goes through my mind is I should see an ashtray next to it full of cigarette butts, you know? It’s all I picture.

Smoking is such a weird thing for TV. They sort of got away with it on ‘Constantine,’ but very limited. You can see him blowing out smoke, with it in his mouth, but not taking a drag.

Yeah, we had one cigar smoking scene — with Cobblepot and Falcone . We were supposed to be smoking them. They cut my cigar right away, then the standards and practices guy comes up to John Doman and is like, ‘Here’s the deal. You can take it out of your mouth, you can’t put it in your mouth. You can’t pull on it but you can exhale when the cigar is out of the frame.’

Then, meanwhile, I can stab someone 40 times and then Fish will scoop out her eye.

You can get away with a lot in terms of violence.

It’s really crazy. It’s so funny, Camren [Bicondova] was just talking about in some ways people’s bodies, or the inability to show people’s bodies and how they are in the world — not nudity, but just showing certain things — versus extreme violence. In a way, it’s almost demeaning, especially for females. You’re saying that the female form is more dangerous to show than that.

It’s sort of what Miley Cyrus was saying in her interview about revenge violence in the ‘Bad Blood’ music video compared to what she faces when taking off her shirt.

Right, she has nipples! We all have nipples.

When you start to see works of art on TV being censored … Imagine a Titian nude, it’ll be gone through in post-production to erase the nipples. It’s a work of art that’s existed for hundreds of years. It’s so bizarre and it’s so arbitrary.

I don’t have kids, so I don’t purport to really know how I would treat the situation if I did. The weird thing is a lot of these decisions in terms of what is acceptable to see are decided by the corporations who advertise on the network.

We have these corporations deciding what is acceptable to see and that’s just jittery to me. It’s the antithesis of expression to me and it is a form of censorship, which is coming down from this enormous entity that is deciding what you can see. It makes me feel weird.

You don’t necessarily want Snickers telling you what is and isn’t okay to watch.

Totally, but I love Snickers, thank you very much! If [they] want to give me a commercial deal …

You mention Camren and it’s funny. Talking to her or anyone on the cast — from regulars to guest stars — everyone is so happy and excited to be playing around in the Batman world.

It’s remarkable. I think the subject matter just gets everyone really jazzed, so ego on our set has been minimal at the most. Everyone — from the day players to Ben [McKenzie] and Jada [Pinkett Smith] — everyone was like, “We’re doing this. We’re in this. It’s not about me, it’s about this world.” We’ve created this community of actors who are all in this one world trying to illuminate as best we can.

Because there’s so much enthusiasm about the project, it makes it hard for someone else to come in and have a bunch of issues.

Especially, people coming in on Season 2 when you’ve already created this family

Yeah, come on in! Get in here and let’s do it! It’s funny seeing other casts and guest starring on things. It’s not always this way, especially when you have a couple of years — which hopefully we will — complacency sets in. I don’t see that happening here.

The day I become complacent, I’m leaving it up to you to come up to me and say so. Because that’s when I should quite, when it stops being fun. I know you can get onto a shot where you’re maybe not into the material, but if you can’t find joy and the magic — you can find goodness in any project, even if it’s the worst f***ing thing.

You’re going to work to make pretend!

Right! What a f***ing dream! It’s insane!

I would say the only time I’ve ever experienced what we have on ‘Gotham’ is when I was on ‘The Walking Dead.’ It was a very similar, familial thing. We’re in this together, making this amazing thing.

I give a lot of credit to Sherry Thomas and Sherry Bialy. They cast ‘The Walking Dead,’ ‘Breaking Bad’ and ‘Gotham.’ They’re some of the best casting directors in their entire business. Their goal is finding interesting people who also really enjoy working and creating.

They’re not really interested in somebody who’s been on 12 different shows back-to-back. Some of them maybe, but then they see with people like that complacency tends to fall into place and it becomes more about, ‘Well, what’s this show going to do for me’ as opposed to, ‘What can I do for this show?’

Beyond just the show itself, the cast had a very busy summer going to conventions around the world, which seems like such a strangely unique experience.

Yes … You know, I’d say about 98% of it is fantastic — the ones I do on my own, not through Warner Bros.

You really seemed to hit a lot of them.

Yeah, Melbourne, the Gold Coast, Shanghai, Dallas, Orlando, everywhere. It was like, you’re sitting at the table and people are coming up and they’re paying money to meet you, get an autograph and photo and they’re so excited to see you.

I’m not one of those people who can shut that off, especially to these people who pay these money to see you.

It’s not easy maintaining that level of enthusiasm all day, but I do it and I bring it to everybody. Then I hear feedback and when I first started doing it people would say, “Thank you for talking to us and looking at us.” It’s very simple things, of course I do it. You’re coming up and you’re saying the nicest things you can say, why would I respond in kind and ask you about you and your life?

I just hear that some don’t look up from their photo … I just couldn’t do it.

And it seems like it would be hard not to be, as you’re there to meet your fans.

I can be totally trite, but I’m learning from this thing … The energy you put out, the positive energy you put out to people, the kindness and the connection and the welcoming you put out to them, it carries on.

In a way, even more so than it would have on Twitter and social media. The word gets out that, “Oh my God, he’s a cool dude who cares about his fans.” The more cons that you do, the more people know that and get excited to come out and see you.

The only tricky thing about that is it becomes you’re graduation parties times a million, where it’s all about you and takes a lot of energy.

Another thing I’m trying to learn is how to give back to people and be present with them and show them love the way they’re showing me love, but also not feeling like I’m giving away parts of myself, if that makes any sense.

This is a lesson I have to learn with everybody — being able to put yourself first, but still being present with other people.

Somehow in between traveling around the world for these various cons, you also managed to sneak in a movie over the summer. I have to know everything about working with James Franco as a film director.

Yes! Yes! He was doing two productions concurrently, producing one and directing and starring in the one I was in — “The Long Home.”

I think James is an incredibly inspiring person. His energy and his need to create at all times, I’ve never seen anything like it.

He would shoot all day long, directing and acting. It’s a period film and we’re shooting in a corn field in the middle of Ohio and he would go back and spend time doing work on the other film or paint or fly to LA for the night for his acting school he’s establishing there. It just never ends with him.

He has this incessant need to create and express himself.

I was so happy to have something else to do, just for my own well-being, because I’ve never played one character for so long. I was like, “Do I know how to do this anymore? Am I just a bag of Cobblepot ticks? Is that my whole thing now?”

Thankfully, no. I got this opportunity to break out of that and do something else. And also, to work with somebody like James who’s so free-flowing. I showed up for the first scene of mine and I’d read in the script that my character was kind of in the background and James calls over to me to get back to work.

Then I show up on set and James is shirtless, dressed as his character. He didn’t shower, because he didn’t want to wash the tattoos off, but he’s also playing this nasty, sick dude. He approaches me and it’s this all-sensory experience.

When we go to do the blocking I’m super nervous and he says, “I’m just going to come up to you and start f***ing with you. I’m just going to start talking to you and just go with it.”

[Gasps] I’m coming out of ‘Gotham,’ now I don’t even know where the camera was, there’s no lighting — maybe a bounce here or there — but “Gotham” lights everything so much.

To go to something so free-form and loose, which is how James likes to keep it … He likes to find moments in the unexpected.

I talked to him on the phone before I started the job and he had the privilege of working with Robert Altman, who was a huge influence on him. He wanted the actors to live and not just be hitting marks.

He didn’t want marks, he wanted the camera floating and finding these moments between the lines. It’s an amazing way to work.

When he told me he was just going to talk to me, I’d just met him. Courtney love is over there, Josh Hutcherson is right there, there’s an amazing group of people, 12 scantily clad women playing prostitutes. This is the world I’m in with this film.

I just felt like I unlocked something, tools I hadn’t really used in so long. I use my tools in “Gotham,” but just the way it’s shot it’s a very different approach to things. The way the camera moves, the lighting, it’s all very intricate.

After watching James take it on, is directing something you’d ever want to try?

Yeah, totally! it would have to be something really close to me. The script would just have to be right or I’d feel so much anxiety about creating someone else’s vision of things.

I’d just love to do something small in intimate with good actors. I know what I respond to as an actor and I love to see actors flourish on set when given the right role and the time to create it and given these moments where they can color them in, but in ways you’d never expect them to — find things only they could find.

Hopefully, we’ll see down the road. At the same time though, that would mean I have a lot of time off and [knocks on wood].

You never know, you could direct an episode of ‘Gotham’! People direct episodes of their shows all the time.

[Laughs] Oh my God, the fact that these guys can do it … The days can be insane. It’s really wild, but it’s really fun.


http://zap2it.com/2015/09/gotham-robin- ... ensorship/

Estrella de 'Gotham' Ssobre el destino de un personaje: "Nadie está exento"
Por Graeme McMillan 28 Septiembre, 2015 6:00pm PT

If there's one thing to learn from the first couple of episodes of Fox's Gotham this season, it's that becoming police commissioner is a bad idea. After commissioner Loeb was forced out by the Penguin in the season two premiere, Capt. Essen (Zabryna Guevara) stepped into the role — only to end up murdered by the Maniax.

For showrunner Bruno Heller, Essen's murder at the hands of Jerome Velaska (Cameron Monaghan) signals that things are getting more dramatic on the series. "In Gotham's world, dramatic and crazy stuff happens every week, and police officers get used to living in that world of tragedy and trauma and victims. The only way to knock them off their equilibrium is to go after their own," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "It's not that they don't care about deaths outside of their own number, but when it hits home, when someone comes into your home and takes away an authority figure like commissioner Essen, then you're really hitting home."

Essen's death, Heller said, paves the way for the arrival of new series regular Michael Chiklis' Capt. Barnes on a plot level, but more importantly, "it really lets everyone know that however hard Gotham has been hit in the past, the Maniax are taking things up a notch — and that the show is taking things up a notch."

But what about Essen herself? THR caught up with Guevara to discuss her exit from the Fox drama, her character's death and the world she's leaving behind.

All things considered, Essen really shouldn't have taken that promotion.

I'm sure everyone had that moment of fear when Essen was named commissioner! [Laughs.] It's one of those things in the show: the higher you go, the more danger you're exposed to. As you can see with the mayor, who's not doing so good himself! No one is exempt.

When did you find out that Essen was going to die? Did you know going into the second season?

At the beginning of the season, I knew Essen was going to meet her demise in some way or fashion, but I didn't find out how it would happen until I got the scripts. It really was a great final two episodes that gave the character a great exit.

In her final scene with Jerome, it's clear that she's going out fighting.

Cameron's a super-intense actor — a lovely guy, but it's not hard to imagine the fear that [Jerome] can instill in someone. At the same time, there's a great sense of fortitude you get from playing a character who has developed a strong spine — in playing the scene, I approached it in the same way I do any scene: What do I want? What am I trying to affect in the other person, and that was pretty easy because Cameron really committed in a big way.

As we were getting the episodes, I was collaborating with the producers to tweak the scenes, and in that final scene when Essen says, "That's gonna leave a mark," that was me. I was like, "You know what? I want to go out with more bite."

It's such a dramatic moment, especially because she'd become one of Gordon's strongest supporters in the GCPD, which wasn't how she started the show. Even when you and Ben [McKenzie, who plays Jim Gordon] were butting heads, did you expect her to end up where she did?

I knew that Essen would be a major player, but I didn't know how it was going to progress. Definitely in the beginning, she had a tug of war with Gordon's moral center being so firm; he really did rock the boat for everyone in the GCPD. Everyone was working on the status quo and maintaining everything the way it was, and he came in and shook everything up. That was something that she really struggled with in the beginning, but in the end — and it's something that you can really see by the end of season one — she was completely on board with him.

If she hadn't died, what kind of commissioner do you think she would have been? Would she have ended up falling prey to the same pressures that Loeb faced?

No. I absolutely think that she would have gone in the direction she had wanted to go with Gordon — ridding the city of the apathy that had taken over every part of its gut. I totally think she was totally going to try and affect a greater change, and she was just cut off before she had a chance.


http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-f ... ead-827323

Entrevista con Sean Pertwee sobre el caos llegando a "Gotham":
Por Stefan Pape - 29 Sept., 2015

Sean Pertwee is a familiar face to us here in the UK and now he’s taking on an iconic role across the pond. Perhaps rivaled only by the inestimable manservant Jeeves, Alfred Pennyworth is a reference quality butler, and his role in the larger Batman mythology cannot be underestimated.

As with much on the TV series Gotham Alfred has evolved through the years and now with this iteration emerges with a more rounded and impactful character than ever.

Stefan Pape sat down with Sean Pertwee ahead of the DVD release of Season One to discuss what’s ahead for Gotham in Season Two.

The new season begins later on this year – what can fans expect? Is it tonally different to the first?

It is the world of Gotham, but what you’ll see are the wheels completely fall off and everything falls into absolute chaos and anarchy. You need to hit the bottom of the barrel before the phoenix can rise from the flames, so what you’re going to see is something more confident, because our fans and our audience knows what we’re doing now in many respects. We’re not reimagining, we’re redefining the mythos behind 75 years of Batman and the characters born out of this city. So this season you’re going to see the city of Gotham descend into chaos, there will be blood on the streets, as Penguin said in the first season.

There’s a new character too, played by James Frain called Galavan, with his band of lunatics called the Maniacs, and they set about to destroy Gotham. So you’ll start to see more focus on the training of Bruce, you’ll also discover, as everybody knows, the secret that Thomas Wayne was keeping with the cave – what was behind that and what he was researching, and what his secret was.

It sounds like there will be an interesting evolution to Bruce and Alfred’s relationship then…

It is, yeah. But also, there’s the introduction of Lucius Fox, the inside man in Wayne Enterprises, and you’ll start to see more of him. So we’re beginning to get a good team together now and the good guys are beginning to amalgamate now. Gordon comes back to the fold and we have Lucius Fox. You’ll start to see the emergence of the band of brothers, people trying to do the right thing.

Chaos sounds good too. We always like chaos.

Yeah, I just read episode three and I cannot tell you… It’s phenomenal, it’s a movie right there. But with all three – you won’t see a marked difference, but you will see a confidence. Because we know the arc, we know where we’re going. The characters have been really well-received now by the fans, so there’s a feeling of confidence within our troupe, and a real, genuine excitement. I cannot wait to see some of this stuff, it’s just fantastic. Also, we get out of the bloody manor [laughs]. We’re not in that flamin’ room drinking cups of tea!

Having spoken to Hayley Atwell in regards to Agent Carter, prior to finding out they’d been given a second season – and she was so hopeful she’d get the second season, but knew it was completely out of her hands. When you got that call to inform you that you’ve got the second season commissioned, you must have been so relieved and thrilled?

Listen, one of my biggest ambitions was to work in New York, all of my friends have worked here – and we sometimes say, look at us. Look at where we are. There’s a real, palpable excitement. We never wanted this to go away, we worked very hard and we have taken it very seriously. We have great fun together and we’re very much a company and we so didn’t want it to finish. But we felt that if we got our heads down and we worked that wouldn’t be the case. We have a confident stride now, and we’re over the moon. So proud to be here doing a second season, I can’t tell you. I just hope there will be many more.

It must also vindicate what you’re doing is working?

Yeah, that’s right. We listen to the fans and what’s liked. You never know what’s going to work on a first season, but we’re going into the second season full of confidence. I can’t talk about the first three episodes, but they’re just phenomenal. The standard of what I’ve seen, of the Arkham Asylum, the Penguin’s Lair – it’s incredible. I can’t tell you how exciting it is, even now, at this stage in my career and my life, to be doing something like this. It’s operatic in its scale, I’m so honoured to be here.

When playing a role like Alfred, who is so well known and had great actors tackle it in the past – can it be a challenge to play that role in a way that fans will identify with, to play up with the traditional aspects of the character, and yet at the same time bring something completely new and unique to the role?

Everybody knows where Alfred ends up don’t they? So the difficulty was to find a truth and a real heartbeat to the character. So we had to go way back, to really why he was there in the first place. It was always obvious to me – he was there because he was Thomas Wayne’s ally, his butler, his confidant, and of course was ex-military. A lot of the fans were quite surprised when they saw my version initially, but they’re beginning to warm to the idea. Of course he was the original enabler, it wasn’t when Bruce Wayne was 18 and decided to become a masked vigilante, he goes way, way back. What piqued his interest? What gave him the discipline? Had Alfred not been there, Batman would be a masked villain – not a vigilante. It’s an integral part of the Batman story, and you start to discover more about it. Much more direction in the second season, almost a contractual agreement drawn between the young Master Bruce and Alfred.

Jeremy Irons is now tackling that role in the forthcoming Batman vs Superman film – do you know Jeremy at all, and have you spoken to him about how he is going about approaching the role?

No, I haven’t. I’ve seen very little about the new movie, just the trailer online. I have no clues where he’s going with it, but he’s a fine actor so I’m sure it will be great. I can’t wait to see the film.

Were there any specific comics you were advised to read or any you sought out yourself to help understand the relationship between Bruce and Alfred?

No there wasn’t. If I’m really honest, I tried to stay away because we were redefining the character. I’ve gone back and looked at them, I did do some research into Alfred, but of course we have to find the truth. Like I said before, we know where he ends up, but how did he get there?

In regards to Bruce Wayne – can you see him becoming a vigilante at any point in Gotham? Perhaps in a few series down the line…?

It’s not really a spoiler to say this, but we definitely see him becoming a lot more active, and see his interests being piqued already, especially with the discovery of what his father was investigating. He’s definitely evolved.

So finally, in the season one finale we have the discovery of the bat cave – where do you think this will lead on to next, and do you think Batman should be introduced?

Batman doesn’t exist until he’s 25. So it’s about the influences that lead to him running away. So it’s all about the building of it. We’ll see. He’ll definitely be active, but it’s not just something he decided to do when he was 18 – it’s something that had interested him, and he went off to train himself to come back and be ready for it. So I don’t know. He won’t be the Batman you know.


http://www.heyuguys.com/sean-pertwee-interview-gotham/

2.04 "Strike Force" (12/10/15): UN NUEVO CAPITÁN ES LLAMADO A LA ACCIÓN (8:00-9:00 PM ET/PT) - El Capitán Barnes (Michael Chiklis) es llamado al deber para crear un cuerpo especial respetuoso con las leyes, con la ayuda de Gordon. Mientras tanto, el Pingüino se ve pillado para hacerle un favor a Galavan, y Nygma le pide a Kringle una cita. Estrellas invitadas: Carol Kane como 'Gertrud Kapelput', Anthony Carrigan como 'Victor Zsasz', Chelsea Spack como 'Kristin Kringle', Saundra Santiago como 'Janice Caulfield', Michael Mulheren como 'Randall Hobbs', Natalie Alyn Lind como 'Silver St. Cloud', Danny Johnson como 'Gus Freeman', Lenny Platt como 'Luke Garrett', Paulina Singer como 'Josie Mac', Ian Quinlan como 'Carl Pinkney' y Lucas Salvagno como 'Sal Martinez'.

http://gamerssphere.com/2015/09/24/goth ... -synopsis/

2.05 "Scarification" (19/10/15): LAS RIVALIDADES DE FAMILIA RESURGEN EN LA CIUDAD (8:00-9:00 PM ET/PT) - Galavan y el Pingüino unen fuerzas con una peligrosa familia de Gotham. Entonces, a medida que resurge la rivalidad entre los Waynes y los Galavans, Gordon lidia por mantener el orden en la ciudad. Estrellas invitadas: Chelsea Spack como 'Kristen Kringle', Lenny Platt como 'Luke Garrett', Paulina Singer como 'Josie', Ian Quinlan como 'Pinkney', Lucas Salvagno como 'Martinez', Michael Potts como 'Sid Bunderslaw', Michelle Veintmilla como 'Bridgit', Leo Fitzpatrick como 'Joe Pike', Noah Robbins como 'Evan Pike', Mary Joy como 'Edwige', Ron Rifkin como 'el Padre Creel'

http://www.spoilertv.com/2015/09/fox-up ... es_29.html

Bruno Heller Revela que ‘es un nuevo amanecer Ien la GCPD’ tras la masacre de los Maniax
Por Sydney Bucksbaum 05 Octubre, 2015

Gotham will never be the same — both the city and the show.

Last week’s bloody, action-packed episode, “Knock, Knock,” ended on quite the shocking note, when Jerome (Cameron Monaghan) — a.k.a. The Joker the leader of new villain crew The Maniax — led the group of escaped Arkham Asylum psychopathic criminals straight into the heart of the Gotham City Police Department and opened fire with machine guns, killing almost everyone inside. And he broadcast the whole thing to the entire city, including the cold-blooded murder of Commissioner Essen (Zabryna Guevara).

So it should come as no surprise that this massacre is going to shake things up in major ways moving forward.

“The immediate result of that massacre is the arrival of the new captain, Captain Barnes played by Michael Chiklis,” executive producer Bruno Heller told us. “He brings all that macho, tough energy that Michael does so well. It’s basically a new dawn in the GCPD because finally, Jim Gordon [Ben McKenzie] has a partner inside headquarters who is as daring, as brave, as willing to go the extra yard to change the city.”

And his arrival could not have come at a more perfect time, since the GCPD is going to completely revamp itself in the wake of Jerome’s attack to fight fire with fire. While it is the “Rise of the Villains,” the heroes have to up their game, too.

“As far as the GCPD goes, after the massacre, it’s no more Mr. Nice Guy,” Heller says. “They start using much more ferocious tactics that are going to lead to both positive results and tragic results that Gordon had not intended. There are big changes coming as a result of that horror.”

Expect Jerome to have a huge target on his back now that he’s publicly taken credit for the GCPD massacre, and that will finally lead viewers to the answer of whether or not he is in fact The Joker.

“We’re going to be giving you concrete answers to his identity,” Heller says. “That story is going to come to a huge and shocking resolution which will explain the whole Joker myth and how it began and how the Joker came to be.”

But what Heller is most excited for fans to see is Bruce Wayne’s (David Mazouz) storyline in these next few episodes.

“Something we’re going to see this year is the underbelly of Wayne Enterprises, the Indian Hill bioengineering laboratory, the subterranean aspects of Wayne Enterprises,” Heller says. “When we go there and see what they’re doing down there, we’re going to be introducing the great Dr. Hugo Strange and Mr. Freeze.”

Heller knew that saving that storyline for season two was the right choice.

“The subtitle of this season is ‘Rise of the Villains’ and I’m so excited to roll out those big baddies,” Heller says. “We’ve got some great ones coming up that is the nub of what makes the DC universe so great, those monsters and villains and the ever-increasing stakes they bring. I’m so excited about what we’re about to do.”


http://nerdist.com/gotham-showrunner-br ... -massacre/

Productor ejecutivo de "Gotham" sobre la impactante historia de orígenes de Joker y el honrar a la leyenda de Batman
Por Dominic Patten 05 Octubre, 2015 5:54p

In a move that many shows would have saved for a season finale, the Batman backstory series tonight laid some new tracks for the origins of the Caped Crusader’s archenemy. Having teased and toyed out the emergence of the Joker since the last half of Gotham’s first season, Monday’s third episode of the self-titled Rise Of The Villains second season of the Fox drama added a whole new twist into how the sadistic criminal mastermind came to be and who he really is.

In a way, it was all revealed less than halfway through the episode when Jerome’s father last words were to tell him, “Your legacy will be death and madness.”

As tonight’s mayhem-filled episode “The Last Laugh” revealed, the Joker isn’t the Cameron Monaghan-portrayed Jerome Valeska — at least not directly. Jerome now is dead, stabbed in front of the citizens and criminals of Gotham on live TV. But with a cult already growing around the chaos and casualties that Jerome and the rest of the Maniax escapees from Arkham Asylum brought to Gotham over the first two episodes and the deep-pocketed gala charity ball on tonight’s show, the Joker is coming.

Now working on the final episodes of the season, executive producer Bruno Heller spoke with me about this new take on The Joker’s origin and how it all weaves together. The Rome co-creator also discusses who may or may not be playing Batman’s deadliest foe, what other villains are coming in Season 2 and paying homage to the legacy of the Dark Knight.

DEADLINE: With the introduction of Jerome last season, even with his Joker-like tendencies, to put it gently, and the big attack on Ben McKenzie’s Jim Gordon from the audience at Comic-Con this summer, it seemed like you were teasing out tonight’s death and the cult that emerges from the very beginning. Why did you decide to throw in this twist, take the Joker in this new direction?
HELLER: Because it’s a twist that leads to more twists. The creation of the Joker is a larger and more epic story than people realize, and this show is very much about kind of the deep, secret history. So, as the show rolls on, people will see how a mythology is born, how a kind of cultural mien is created that will lead us to the Joker himself.

When the Joker appears, he is an inevitable part of the history of Gotham. He’s not someone who created himself out of nothing. He’s part of a whole cultural history, a whole tradition. I know that sounds kind of highfalutin, but that’s what the twist is about.

DEADLINE: But the Joker is a character who has a pretty well established origin story from the early 1950s in Detective Comics. There’s been variations of that story, but essentially he was a criminal, sometimes called the Red Hood, who fell in a vat of near deadly chemicals and became the killer comedian. From what we saw in “The Last Laugh,” even after Jerome is killed and the duplicitous Theo Galavan emerges as a hero to Gotham, that backstory is out the window. Why?
HELLER: Well, because sometimes backstories are more complicated and interesting than, you know, falling into vat of toxic chemicals or being bitten by a spider. Like they say, nobody creates themselves out of whole cloth, whether it’s Elvis Presley, or you name it — Jesus. There’s a tradition in forebears and ancestors of those characters that went into creating them. So, to me, Jerome is genuinely the mother and father of the Joker. He is the seed of the Joker.

DEADLINE: So, with Season 2 heading into its last episodes of production, have you cast an actual Joker yet, or is that still in the cards?
HELLER: We have not cast an actual Joker yet.

DEADLINE: You know that a lot of shows would have used this big a twist on this big a character for a season ender. Why did you get this out there so early in this Rise Of The Villains season?
HELLER: If we’d left it for a season ender, I think people would have felt that we had sold them a dummy, if you like. That it was a red herring, that we were just simply using the brilliance of Cameron Monaghan to goose the show. When in fact, it’s actually a much deeper and longer game we’re playing. We want them to ask that question and be engaged in, you know, how the hell does this longer story play out? You make it a season ender, you’re kind of putting more weight on it, and you’re kind of tricking the audience. We don’t want to trick the audience.

Look, it was very much a considered decision, and we recognized that we’re putting a twist in the story that will take some people aback and be shocking. Fine. We weren’t trying to lie before about who Jerome is, and where he’s going, but it’s the first chapter in a longer story.

DEADLINE: A longer origin story?
HELLER: Absolutely. Origin stories are to me, and I think to a large part of the audience, one of the most fascinating aspects of this whole world. You know, to a degree, those origin stories are the meat and drink of this world. So now all of that will become clearer to the audience as this season unfolds. You’ll see how Gotham itself coalesces around the legend of Jerome. I don’t want to give away too much, but the audience will see an organic progression towards the real history of the Joker, rather than a kind of legendary supervillain who creates himself out of nothing.

To me, the difference between mythology and real history is that the real history has to tell a kind of believable story of how these things happened. The physics has to work.

DEADLINE: So you are planning out for a five-season Gotham, a six-season…
HELLER: Well, if the business was different, and we were blessed with a firm number of years that we had a story to tell, then I would work it out to that degree. One of the tricks that you have to learn, with episodic TV, is you don’t know how many years you’re going to be blessed with, so, we have an arc worked out that is multi-year, and we kind of have to keep on our toes to tell it completely.

DEADLINE: It’s not like with the even more maturing young Bruce Wayne, Jim Gordon, now crime lord Oswald Cobblepot and Selina Kyle, to name a few, you don’t have backstories galore to draw from. And there’s the new characters or enriched characters from the comics you’ve introduced. It is a plethora of riches?
HELLER: The beauty of this world is there are so many stories to tell, and there’s so many wonderful characters. Wonderful characters we haven’t even begun to introduce — it’s a world that is infinitely expandable. So we’re going to see Mr. Freeze this season. We’re going to meet Dr. Hugo Strange. We’re going to meet Firefly. And there’s several other surprises that I want to keep as surprises.

DEADLINE: When Gotham was first announced, I know there were concerns among the fanboys and fangirls that you were treating icons in a new way, and that always raises the possibility of a Batman backlash. Now in your second season of the show, what has the response been like for you?
HELLER: On the whole, the response, overwhelmingly, has been good, from the fans. It’s an odd position to be in because people don’t come up to you on the street, and say, you know, that was rubbish or you’ve betrayed my sense of who Bruce Wayne is. You tend to get the compliments more readily than you get the people who might have objections. And I’ll give myself some praise, on this level, we cast really correctly and well with the key characters.

I think, if people did not believe that David Mazouz is Bruce Wayne, then the whole thing falls apart. But that young man is genius of an actor, and full of soul and depth and kind of conflict. And once you believe that character, and you believe Sean Pertwee as Alfred — which everybody, I feel, does — Ben McKenzie’s Jim Gordon, and Robin Lord Taylor as Penguin; he makes that character sing. Once those sort of key elements are in place, and you’ve given the audience permission to suspend disbelief, then everything else follows.

Everyone involved in Gotham recognizes the privilege and the honor of working with such iconic characters, and I think, as long as we treat those characters and this story with respect, then people will feel that and be willing to go along for the ride.


http://deadline.com/2015/10/gotham-joke ... 201566479/

Cameron Monaghan sopesa el futuro de Jerome en "Gotham"
Por Lucas Siegel 06/10/2015

Well, did you see that one coming? After months of teases, extensive promotion, and lots of laughs, it turns out that Jerome is very likely not The Joker. At the end of the episode, Jerome looked dead, very dead. He was stabbed in the neck, both bleeding and choking out, and didn't make a move or a sound once he was on the coroner's table.

So is there any way for Jerome to come back? I asked actor Cameron Monaghan if he'd even be interested in coming back to the role, and he was cautious.

"I mean, it would depend, just like it has every single time, on how it’s done, if it makes sense, what the ideas were," Monaghan said. "Obviously, I’ve had an extraordinary time and a fun time with the character so far. But I wouldn’t want to ever do something that felt forced or unnatural to the story that they were telling or to the story of the character. If they could find a natural, logical way to bring Jerome back? Then yeah, I probably would. But there’s no telling as of right now."

So Jerome is definitely dead, according to the actor, but if there was a way that made enough sense, he'd come back around. After all, in comic books, characters have come back from falling twenty stories, being shot multiple times, and even being vaporized down to next to nothing. So what's a little stab in the neck?

http://comicbook.com/2015/10/06/cameron ... am-future/

Cameron Monaghan habla sobre el giro casi mortal, su ídolo animado y el perder el sueño por el papel de 'Joker'
Por Matt Webb Mitovich / 05 Octubre 2015, 9:00 PM PDT

As Fox’s Gotham drills deeper into Season 2, the DC Comics-based drama is now playing with a slightly less full deck.

In this Monday’s episode, Theo Galavan, Jerome and Barbara put on quite a show for the town, with the latter pair lording over a mayhem-filled magic show at a charity gala. Ultimately, Theo would play the role of “hero” in front of the city’s elite, in part by going off script and plunging a knife into Jerome’s neck.

Here, Shameless star Cameron Monaghan shares the secrets behind his Gotham run, including his main inspiration in playing that joker Jerome, and how the wild role made for many sleepless nights.

TVLINE | First of all, what all did the producers tell you about this character and what they’d want from you, when you were first cast?
When I was first cast, it was for just the one episode in the first season, and they told me that he’s a character involved in the Joker mythos in some way — “He may be the Joker, he may not. But we’re going to have you do the scene.” I immediately said yes, and then I said, “Oh wait, I dont know if I want to touch this,” because this is something extremely near and dear to my heart. Then, towards the close of that season, they asked me to be a part of the second, the idea being that I would get to play round with it even more. Taking that character to new places, to new levels, was something that was extremely exciting to me.

TVLINE | What were you most conscious of doing and not doing as you created Jerome? We hear a little Jack Nicholson in his voice, see a little Heath Ledger in his glower…
I hadn’t specifically tried to draw from the context of any live-action actor. They obviously are extremely, extremely influential to me. As someone who as a kid watched these movies a lot and loved them and admired them, I’m sure they burrowed deep into my subconscious but it’s not something I consciously wanted to do. The only performance I felt at all comfortable with drawing inspiration from was Mark Hamill from the animated series. He’s lived with that character for 20 years and he’s done incredible work with it, and his dynamism is something I really appreciated. Beyond that, it was just reading every major run in the comics involving the character that I could get my hands on, looking at his face, how h’s drawn, and taking what I could from that.

TVLINE | Would you say that Jerome is one unabashedly sick puppy?
[Laughs] Yes, I think you could call him a sick puppy — and he would appreciate it. He would probably thank you. He enjoys killing his humanity, sometimes literally, as when killing his parents and what made him. He is fully committed to an idea of insanity in a way that is almost admirable. It’s completely horrifying, but there’s something strangely charismatic about his passion.

TVLINE | He had that line when he got the briefing from Theo, “You’re singin’ my song.”
Yeah, the Galavan character (played by James Frain) is the first person I think that Jerome has come across that introduces the idea of using the world as a grand stage to perform evil, of not just having small personal acts but taking it to a larger level. Galavan was almost a strange father figure to him, which was a nice turn.

TVLINE | Have you seen the finished episode? What do you make of the closing montage, which evokes Jerome’s father’s premontiion?
Yeah, Jerome even says it to Essen in the second episode, that he’ll “spread across the city like a virus.” That’s the best way to describe his personality, as infectious, in the best and worst ways possible.

TVLINE | What will you miss most about this show?
I’m going to miss playing around with this part, and I’ll miss my fellow actors who are not only phenomenal in front of the camera but are also incredibly lovely people. For a cast full of “villains” and “tough guys,” they were all really sweet and welcoming. I’m not going to miss the many, many sleepless nights that I had with this part.

TVLINE | What exactly made your nights sleepless?
It was a mixture of excitement and intimidation, and the role itself as well. I was in that character’s head space when we were filming, for 15 hours a day, so thankfully I had a very patient girlfriend. [Laughs] When I got back home while I was still “on,” she was like, “OK, Cameron, all right…. I got it.”

TVLINE | Because you were so excited to play this role, did you ever circle back with the producers to ask, “Are you sure he’s not the Joker, with a capital J? Are you certain?”
I think he’s the Joker in that he represents the idea, the greater concept. And somewhere, some kid or some person watched [his videos/the news coverage] and it burrowed into their mind, and one day it will snap and take them over. The idea of this person will possess someone completely new. So, I love that idea — something about it really is chilling and excited me when I read the episode.



http://tvline.com/2015/10/05/gotham-sea ... rome-dies/

¿Podría regresar Jerome a ‘Gotham’? ‘Nunca se sabe’
Por Chris E. Hayner 05 Oct, 2015 09:10 PM

A moment of silence for “Gotham,” please. In the third episode of Season 2, “The Last Laugh,” it was time to say goodbye to Jerome (Cameron Monaghan).

Throughout four episodes of “Gotham,” Jerome became a definite favorite among fans and the likeliest suspect to become the Joker. Of course, after taking a knife to the neck from Theo Galavan (James Frain), that’s clearly not the case. However, it’s impossible to deny he’s started Gotham City down a terrible and violent path — just what Galavan needs to be the city’s hero.

After coming to terms with Jerome’s death, Zap2it spoke to Monaghan about his time on “Gotham” and the lasting effects his character will have on the show.

Zap2it: Before getting to end of Jerome’s journey, let’s jump back in time a bit to when you first signed on to appear on ‘Gotham.’ How much information were you given about Jerome’s story arc?

Cameron Monaghan: I was given the full run down. I received a call from Danny Canon while I was working on another production a month or so prior to filming “Gotham” when they were still in the writers room and they were ironing out the details.

They had a pretty firm grasp of what they wanted to happen. Obviously, it wasn’t fully written out to dialogue or anything that specific. At the same time they were open to ideas or suggestions from me of what I wanted to see what the character.

We had a really nice, long conversation about that and I was able to plan accordingly for these three episode — find the beats, find the arc and know where we go to lead up to a logical climax that felt like a sucker punch for the audience.

That’s sort of the perfect way to explain it. Jerome really did get the last laugh, especially after making such an impact in the first three episodes. It led you to believe he was going to be a menacing force going forward and in a way, he’s going to be.

Certainly his influence is something that’s going to echo for a very long time. Maybe forever. [laughs]

Clearly we know now that Jerome isn’t the Joker, though he may inspire that character at some point. For you, when preparing for the role did you look back on previous versions of the Joker for inspiration?

Yeah. For the first season I had only known I was going to be doing that one episode — that one scene, for sure. They’d told me they’d gone on a Christmas break so I had three or four weeks where I got to prep for it.

At the time, I was already extremely familiar with the films and I didn’t want to watch them again because I didn’t want them to be in my mind as much as possible. I did read as many of the comics as I could — pretty much any famous run I could get my hands on and a bunch people didn’t talk about.

I was also a massive fan of “Batman: The Animated Series” when I was younger, so I went back and watched some of it and realized just how dynamic Mark Hamill’s performance is and how admirable it is. Plus, just how well the character was animated and some of the one-off stories with that character inspired me with what I would want to see within a live action context.

Thankfully, going back for the second season, some of that stuff was able to make it into the show.

Truthfully, Hamill’s Joker doesn’t seem to get the respect it deserves in a world where Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger have played him in movies. It’s nice to hear you took inspiration from that take on Joker.

Yeah. There really is something to be said about someone who not only does an incredible job with a character but find new things after, what is it, two decades of playing it? It’s still absolutely amazing to listen to him every single time he approaches the role.

Something that always stands out about Joker is his laugh. How did you find Jerome’s laugh?

[laughs] Well, I laugh a lot. Those four weeks I was locked in my apartment and just a shut in and laughed over and over and over. I did that again before we started filming the season, to the point where I lost my voice. Thankfully I was able to get it back before filming, but I had to lay off of it a bit.

Sadly, we’ve not said goodbye to Jerome, but he died with a smile on his face. The end of the episode is left a bit open to interpretation, but do you think he’s happy with what he left behind?

Well, it is a comic book world and you never know for sure.

Yes, the fact that he got his punchline, he got his joke, he got to play it on this entire city, he really did get the last laugh.

Between “Gotham” and “Shameless,” you’ve been able to play two very different kinds of mental illness. Naturally “Shameless” portrays it in a very realistic way, but in taking on these two roles what have you learned about mental illness and the way the brain works?

Well, obviously I has a pretty big season last year on “Shameless,” where I did get to explore that. It was great because I’ve had some of my own experiences with family and friends dealing with mental illness in many different forms. I’ve seen it and I’ve seen it affect people, so it was great to try to understand that and research it.

From there, I actually worked on another series called “Mercy Street.” It’s a Civil War show and my character has post traumatic stress disorder, so he’s falling apart and losing his mind in an entirely different way.

Then, obviously, I went on to “Gotham.” That is extremely balls to the wall, unsubtle in a great way.

With any character, all you can do is attach it to yourself and your personal experiences and try to find what feels true to your own personality and who you are. I had to find parts of me with each of these roles that felt true.


http://zap2it.com/2015/10/gotham-the-la ... -monaghan/

‘Gotham’ tiene la última carcajada con el misterio de Joker
Por Variety 05 Octubre, 2015

After months of Internet speculation, it looks like the joke’s on us. Jerome (Cameron Monaghan) might be dead, but his bloodthirsty legacy will live on, if the chilling final moments of this week’s “Gotham” are any indication.

After teasing Batman fans with the possibility that the unhinged teenager was the younger version of Dark Knight’s most iconic nemesis, The Joker, the Fox drama definitively laid that theory to rest by dispatching the murderous leader of the Maniax in a fittingly public fashion this week, in front of Gotham’s wealthiest residents as he attempted to murder Bruce Wayne (David Mazouz). But it wasn’t one of our heroes that did the deed — Jerome’s jailbreaker, the villainous Theo Galavan (James Frain) stabbed him in the throat in order to make himself look like a savior in the eyes of Gotham’s elite, instead of the Machiavellian mastermind he apparently is.

That should’ve been the end of Jerome’s story, but “Gotham” was determined to have the last laugh, focusing on a number of other deranged young men across the city who seemed inspired by Jerome’s showmanship and maniacal cackle. From a twitchy drunk in a bar to a young boy with neglectful parents to a psychotic pair who decided to murder a homeless man before turning on each other, it would appear that there are plenty of potential candidates for Batman’s eventual archenemy still on the loose.

“Gotham” showrunner Bruno Heller recently told Nerdist that the show would provide “concrete answers to [Jerome’s] identity,” and the episode certainly made good on his promise: “That story is going to come to a huge and shocking resolution which will explain the whole Joker myth and how it began and how the Joker came to be.”

At San Diego Comic-Con, “Gotham’s” executive producers teased that in their pre-Batman world, The Joker is more of an ideology than one single person anyway, something that Monaghan confirmed to Zap2It: “It’s less of a he and more of an idea. It’s not about a man. It’s about the ideology of a man and what that represents and how it affects other people.”

But the fall of Jerome — even if it precipitates the rise of the real Joker — will also make way for new villains in “Gotham” season two; Heller teased two upcoming additions from the Batman canon: “Something we’re going to see this year is the underbelly of Wayne Enterprises, the Indian Hill bioengineering laboratory, the subterranean aspects of Wayne Enterprises,” he told Nerdist. “When we go there and see what they’re doing down there, we’re going to be introducing the great Dr. Hugo Strange and Mr. Freeze.”

As for Jerome, it looks like a certain prediction for his future will come true, one way or another: “You will be a curse upon Gotham. Children will wake from sleep screaming at the thought of you. Your legacy will be death and madness.”

Mission accomplished.


http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/gotham- ... 201610773/

Cameron Monaghan habla sobre el giro de Gotham, y el crear la risa de Jerome
Por Samantha Highfill 05 Oct, 2015

So … we guess Jerome’s not the Joker?

In a shocking twist, Gotham killed off Cameron Monaghan’s Jerome Valeska only three episodes into its second season. We hopped on the phone with Monaghan to talk about the character, how long he knew he wasn’t the Joker, and how exactly he crafted that laugh:

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Did you know you weren’t the Joker all along?
CAMERON MONAGHAN: I had known from before we started shooting this season what the plans were going to be. So I had gotten to plan accordingly and figure out the arc and where I wanted it to go to build up to that moment in a way that was a suckerpunch.

I’m curious how you then approached the character if you knew you were Joker-like but not the Joker?
I had to approach the character as Jerome — he’s Jerome Valeska. I had to work within the context of what the show had given me and do stuff that made natural sense to those circumstances. At the same time, I was still drawing inspiration from the comics and from that character because I wanted him to be so much of a personality and so distinctive that he could inspire someone like that. It was its own set of challenges.

So how was Jerome described to you?
The first season, they approached me and just said, “This is a character that is involved in the Joker mythos. He might be the Joker, he might not. We know what we’re doing but we’re not going to be able to tell you.” I said, “Okay, well, I’m going to study the Joker a lot and just do with that what I can.” So I did. And then before we started the second season, they gave me the rundown and then asked for my opinion of what I would like to see and what they were thinking and what they were planning and so I was able to then run with that and plan accordingly from that.

Were you intimidated to take on a role that had inspired so many amazing performances in the past?
Yeah, are you kidding? I had admired them so much as a kid, these really were some of the most influential performances of my life and so it took me a while before I felt comfortable in taking it. I was under a deadline and I had to give them an answer. My first instinct immediately when I was asked was yes, but then I took a step back and was like wait, let me think about this and to be honest, until I had stepped into the interrogation room set, I didn’t know if I was going to be able to pull it out of me. And then we did the rehearsal and the scene and I went full out and I felt the air in the room go out in a way that felt right and so it felt like it clicked and so I’m glad that it did.

Let’s talk about that laugh. How long did it take you to craft it?
I found out about the role before we started shooting for the first season right before the Christmas break, which I was really appreciative of because over that holiday break I got to lock myself in my apartment and laugh like a crazy person and do that over and over and over until my ribs hurt. So I did that, but then between the first and second season, I got to develop that even further. I wanted to not only have the laugh be strong but have it be dynamic and for it to change and have it be affected by the character’s mood and where he was and what he was doing and how he was feeling, so that became the new challenge on top of the initial just trying to establish it.

Did you look to any previous performances — or even animal sounds — to help come up with the sound?
[Laughs] I had been watching a lot of nature documentaries at the time and something about reptiles and serpents, the strange deadness in the eyes I found really fascinating — and sharks have that as well. There’s something serpent-like, snake-like, about Jerome in the case that he could be looking away one second and then the next he’s striking you and he’s at your throat. I actually tried to find a few lines that I wanted to kind of hiss out and sound like it’s slithering out of him.

Do you have a favorite Jerome scene?
Filming is such a nerve-wracking and stressful process for me. I love it so much and it’s so fun but I never have a time to fully appreciate it until after I’m done and I get to step back and look back at it. I think the first time that I felt like it was working was when I got to take the bus in the second episode. That whole sequence. It was the first thing we shot for the episode and it was Jerome’s moment of stepping up and embracing the villainy and taking the grand stage. I didn’t know how that was going to go down and then when I did it, it actually was feeling okay. That was very exciting for me to feel that way. It gave me more confidence while I was doing it, which was great.

Were you at all disappointed when they told you Jerome wasn’t the Joker?
No. Every bit of this has been a fantastic surprise in the case that when they first asked me about it and then I thought I was going to only be doing that one scene and the fact that I could even touch anything within the Batman mythos and within this character that I admire so much was incredible. And then when they asked for me to come back to play more within that character, I mean, that was incredible. So no, there was no part of me that was disappointed. Not one bit.

How do you interpret the ending of this episode?
In many ways the episode is, at least it was for me, a love letter to the character and to 75 years of the character in that it’s an acknowledgment that there’s something about this personality that is infectious and seductive. It sticks in your brain in a way that it just lodges in there and it can burrow its way into a popular consciousness — obviously the character of the Joker has. So we see a reflection of that in that this man, this personality, it ripples across the city in some meaningful way. That’s what it was for me, at least.

How long was your face frozen like that?
[Laughs] I can honestly say, being dead is really hard. You would not think that being dead is difficult. I’ve been dead in a few different things and each time, your eyes are watering because you’re trying not to blink and you’re holding your breath so your body doesn’t move and you’re just so worried about trying to appear dead that your brain is racing, which is the last thing that should be happening when you’re a dead person. The camera was moving and I was trying not to make my pupils dilate. Like how do you purposefully not do that? I don’t know.

Do you have any words of advice for anyone else who might take on a similar role?
God I don’t think I could give advice when such other incredible actors have done it before me and done such amazing things. I think it would be unfair of me. All I can say is that I really do think there’s something about this character that, if it’s fully embraced, it just brings out the best in every person that it touches within their performances. There’s something about it that draws something out of you. That can be both difficult but also really amazing. That’s all I can say.


http://www.ew.com/article/2015/10/06/go ... 95d8daf0cb

¿Es este el final para el Jojer de 'Gotham'?
Por Graeme McMillan 05 Octubre, 2015 6:00pm PT

A week after Fox's Gotham raised the stakes by offing police commissioner Sarah Essen, Monday's "The Last Laugh" went even further in proving that no one is safe when Jerome Valeska (Shameless series regular Cameron Monaghan) — the boy who it seemed was destined to become the Joker — was killed.

In a surprise twist, Theo Galavan (James Frain) went further than anyone expected in pretending to save the day from Valeska at a public event, stabbing the villain in the neck to ensure — for the cameras — that he would never be able to threaten anyone ever again. Even as the final scene of the episode showed Valeska on the slab in the morgue — while, curiously enough, citizens of Gotham start laughing uncontrollably for mysterious reasons — it seemed unreal: Could Jerome really be dead? The Hollywood Reporter caught up with Monaghan to find out.

We didn't see that coming!

It's quite the punchline, huh?

Is Jerome really dead?

I don't know! It's a comic book world, and sometimes in a comic book world, people don't stay dead for very long! [Laughs.] But I wouldn't be able to tell you if something was going to happen later this season or in a season to come.

Did you have an idea, going into the season, that this was how Jerome would end up?

Yes. I knew prior to filming the game play of the season and what was going to go down, which I was thankful for. It let me plan out an arc for Jerome, and know which beats I'd want to hit for each episode to be able to build up to that episode, and have it be the gut punch that it is.

What kind of beats were on your list?

I wanted to accomplish a specific goal for each episode. Episode one was the establishment that he has full-on embraced the personality that he revealed in his appearance last season, and at the end of that episode, he begins to understand the concept of being a showman, leading to the second episode, which sees him rise to that stage. And the third one, he becomes the full-on villain, he truly has lost any sense of humanity. He kills his father, he literally takes the stage, he reaches the height of his insanity. It was a matter of trying to find each beat for each stage of that journey.

When Jerome confronted his father, it was as if his mask slipped and we saw the anger and pain behind the clown. He suddenly seemed more human. Was that something you consciously tried to bring out?

No! [Laughs.] If anything, it took effort to try and squash the humanity in him. I think there's an innate tendency with actors in wanting to humanize, but one of the defining things about this character is that he's trying to kill his humanity in any way, shape or form possible. [His humanity] was something that came through in the scenes, but it was something that I was consciously not wanting to bring out. I didn't want it to feel forced.

Jerome was teased as being the proto-Joker, and certainly had obvious callouts to that character — especially when it came to the laugh. Did you look at earlier onscreen incarnations of that character to inspire Jerome?

No. Especially not the live-action ones; those performances are something I admired — Jack Nicholson brought this sense of danger to the character, and then Heath Ledger redefined that danger, and both did such incredible work — but there was no way I was ever going to be able to top them. The only thing I could do was to play Jerome, and let him find his own quirks and his own identity.

So who was Jerome to you?

I wanted him to be someone who has this sick charisma — to make you want to watch him, even though he's doing atrocious things. He's a showman, and he has this sense of humor that you can't help but admire, and this commitment to his insanity on this large level. To me, it was important to push the comedy and the showmanship. That's where I managed to find him.

Talking about the comedy — that laugh…

For my first episode [in the first season], there was this process that took place for a few weeks over the Christmas break. I found out I got the role, and before I started filming, I locked myself into my apartment and I was doing it every day, all day. Neighbors probably thought I was going to kill somebody, or that I was killing somebody, I think; they still look at me pretty funny.

Between the first and second season, what was important to me was that it never sounded the same depending on the context, because the laugh is reflection on what he's feeling, and how he's feeling. Sometimes it's smaller and more maniacal, and sometimes it's pure glee. It's trying to find the different levels, and that is something I did learn from a Joker, from Mark Hamill's portrayal [in the 1990s animated Batman series].

Every time he does the laugh, it's totally different, and totally reflective of the context of what's going on. That inspired me, I wanted to make sure I did that as well.

Is there a sense of missed opportunity to leaving Jerome behind so early? It looked as if he was going to be one of the major characters in the season.

I was happy to get to touch anything in this mythos at all — I love Batman in many forms, from the comics to the TV series to the movies. I've been a massive fan since I was a kid. I did think that the one scene I did last season was genuinely going to be it, and I had come to terms with that. And then, by the end of the season, they approached me about coming back for some more, which was an incredible surprise.

I remember there was a moment in the second episode where I jump onto the side of the moving gas truck and I get to do the laugh as I'm driving away, and, within that moment, I had this surreal experience of, 'Oh my gosh, I'm getting to do this right now.' Most of the time, I was so focused on the work — and it was so nerve-racking — that I was never able to really take a step back and appreciate it. At that one moment, I got to have this out-of-body experience, and it was amazing.


http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-f ... han-829088

Bruno Heller: "Absolutamente hemos considerado la posibilidad de una Joker femenina"
Por Lucas Siegel 06/10/15

Yes, despite his expert protrayal at the hands of Cameron Monaghan, who seemed to take the best of multiple Jokers and put them into the character of Jerome, the young man with the sadistic laugh died last night on Gotham. The character, then, serves to inspire the next attempt - or two or five or ten attempts - at becoming the ultimate villain.

When discussing the death of Jerome with Gotham showrunner Bruno Heller, though, we had to ask about the ComicBook.com theory that Barbara Kean could, in fact, become The Joker on the series. After all, Heller has said in the past that The Joker would be inspired by other people, and Barbara worked very closely with Jerome these last few episodes. She even commented to mastermind Theo Galavan, "I don’t know, the kid had a way about him" when he mentioned Jerome's whole modus operandi.

At the end of a phone interview with Heller, I asked about the theory. The writer and producer known for his candid nature gave a still-somehow-surprisingly-candid response: It's completely feasible. Aside from the evidence already on Gotham, and the last three weeks of additional support for the theory about Barbara, there is some comic book support as well. If you think of Gotham as an alternate reality to the main DC Comics world, in another alternate reality, Flashpoint, there was already a female Joker. In that world, Bruce Wayne was killed in the alley, driving his father Thomas to become Batman and his mother Martha to become The Joker. Also, Barbara Kean has historically had some mental instability in the comics, and the son of her and Jim Gordon has gone on to be a sadistic killer in his own right.

Here is Bruno Heller's response to the theory - and even the possibilty of a female Joker - in full:

We talked about theories earlier, and I posted one to the site recently that became pretty popular; the theory is that Barbara could become the Joker of this world.

Bruno Heller: (laughs loudly)

Rather than asking you for a flat out yes or no that you can't give me, I’d rather ask you, how open are you to a larger twist like that, where it’s a female version of a major character or a major character that we know from the comics that becomes someone else here?

BH: 100% possible. One of the central themes of the DC world is transformation and revelation. Absolutely, those kinds of – I wouldn’t want to call it playing with people’s expectations or gender expectations – but we’ve absolutely considered the possibility of a female Joker, and we haven’t… well I’ll stop myself from saying more because I won’t be able to stop revealing things. (laughs)

No possibility – it is incumbent on us, when we’re telling such a rich, and psychedelic and surreal and infinitely expandable story, it’s both one of the joys of it and one of the scary things about it: you can plausibly go anywhere with this story. So nothing is too strange or too bizarre or too shocking for us to consider. And some of those shocking and surprising things will inevitably end up on screen to either the delight of fans or to their horror. As long as people respond and are engaged, we’ve done our job.

http://comicbook.com/2015/10/06/gothams ... ssibility/

Revelación de Gotham: Jerome no estaba bromeando
Por Damian Holbrook 06 Octubre, 2015 12:01 am

So much death. So much chaos. So much for Jerome Valeska (Cameron Monaghan) being the pre-canon Joker.

In Monday's jaw-dropping episode of Gotham, the psycho we loved to love met his maker when Maniax ringleader Theo Galavan (James Frain) fatally double-crossed his red-headed minion during their staged siege at a Gotham charity shindig. Introduced on the Fox drama last season as a carnival kid who offed his own mother, the chronically amused Jerome had since been pegged as the killer most likely to become the Clown Prince of Crime. Of course, this being Gotham, nothing is as it seems, and now it seems that we've seen the last of this one. We spoke with Monaghan, who is currently shooting his seventh season as Shameless' Ian Gallagher, from the Showtime dramedy's Chicago set—and from the sounds of it, the laughter has officially died for poor Jerome.

We're still shocked that this happened! When did you know that Jerome was going to be killed off?
I knew from before we started this season what the plan was for these three episodes, so I was able to kind of plan accordingly where the beats we wanted to hit were in each episode.

How did the producers originally explain this guy?
They came to me and said 'Hey, there is this part that is tied to the Joker mythos, he could be the Joker, would you like to do it?' I said yes immediately and then thought actually, maybe not, I have to think about this! Then I read the script and decided that I really wanted to be a part of it…initially I didn’t even know I was going to be doing more than just one scene. So this has been a privilege and a surprise.

Jerome was a hoot, but also a total monster. Were there any Batman properties that inspired your performance?
I was a huge fan of Batman: The Animated Series and Mark Hamill has done such incredible stuff with the character of the Joker. How he played the part was something that I felt was important, so I paid specific attention to that one. And obviously, the touchstone of the Joker story is the [comic-book storyline] The Killing Joke.

When did they decide Jerome would not actually be the Joker?
I think they had this game plan for a while. But that is a very strict definition of it “not" being him. Because what we’re trying to establish is this ideology, this idea of this pervasive nature of his insanity and how it is something that can spread. Like a virus.

Hence the closing scene with everyone laughing after his death. Taking on a role that was even Joker-adjacent had to be daunting.
Oh yeah. It absolutely was. I am a huge Batman fan, I grew up reading the comics and watching the movies and the animated series. The character is one of the greatest villains in modern fiction. He’s incredible [and] he’s been played by some of the best actors of the past generations. So yeah, it was incredibly daunting to step anywhere close to the character. At the same time, it’s been so exciting.

So, if it is in fact Jerome’s insanity that infects whomever may go on to become the actual Joker, do you think another actor could end up emulating your performance?
I don’t know! Who knows where they’re going to go with this? I don’t, but I am sure they have some ideas. Maybe it will be someone we have met before. Or somebody we thought we knew. I don’t know. [Laughs]


http://www.tvinsider.com/article/45073/ ... edium=TVGM

Michael Chiklis sobre 'Gotham': Gordon está en un camino 'hacia el Infierno'
Por Robert Chan 08 Oct, 2015

“When cops and robbers meets the comic book world? Yeah, let’s get Chiklis over here.” That’s the way Michael Chiklis — who played icons of both genres in The Shield and Fantastic Four — explains how he got cast on Gotham. And the results have been like a Cinderella story: “My foot fit in the slipper really well.”

Now that the GCPD has suffered a serious blow — the “Rise of the Villains” laid waste to police headquarters — Captain Nathaniel Barnes is “the cavalry that’s going to push back,” says Chiklis. Barnes is a tough, by-the-book guy —someone who believes “law is the only thing that separates us from the animals.” He takes Gordon under his wing because he “sees him as the hope and future of this police department.”

At the same time though, he’s worried about Gordon spiraling into an “ends-justifies-the-means law enforcement,” and judging from the number of crooks Jim’s been throwing through windows, that concern seems justified. “He’s trying to pull him off of that path because he knows that’s the way to Hell. It’s making for some really good stuff because this whole thing is bubbling up into a war.”

Chiklis describes the character as a “Bull in a bull ring — not a bull in a china shop. He comes in horns out,” and that makes his face-offs with co-star Ben McKenzie “juicy.” Barnes comes in with a history of dealing with Gotham’s style of lax ethics and that friction “gives me and Ben really great stuff to do together.” His rapport with McKenzie is new, but he’s old friends with Donal Logue — who he worked with on The Commish — and Sean Pertwee, who co-starred in Soldier with him back in 1998. “Cory [Michael Smith] is great,” he says, “I haven’t got to work with Robin [Lord Taylor] yet, but I’m really looking forward to butting heads with that kid.” He calls McKenzie a class act and says his welcoming attitude makes him feel “really comfortable and at home” on the Gotham set.

Not too comfortable, though. “My ribs are killing me!” he says with a laugh. “We did some crazy s–t this week. I’m kinda beaten up. The action sequences we just did over the last three days were just kick ass!”

https://www.yahoo.com/tv/michael-chikli ... .html?nf=1