Mark Hamill Was Asked About Playing The Joker After Kevin Conroy's Passing, And His Response Was Heartbreaking
Batman and The Joker are like yin and yang, where each feeds off the other, and both are needed for either to exist. (More or less.) The same can be said about Batman: The Animated Series's iconic stars Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill, who have voiced the respective archnemeses for decades. Understandably, Conroy’s untimely death shook Hamil as it did multitudes of devoted fans, and a year after the voice actor’s death, Hamill shared a heartbreaking response when asked about playing the Crown Prince of Crime again.
The Batman-Joker dream team came together in 1992 after Fox greenlit the animated superhero series, though it might have gone a wholly different route had Mark Hamill not found inspiration in Michael Keaton’s Batman to drive his audition to play The Joker. After the roles were cast, the Hamill-Conroy team-up felt like pure kismet, but playing the Bat’s biggest adversary might not be in the cards for Hamill anymore without his most familiar co-star. When asked by a fan about playing Joker again in the future during San Francisco Fan Expo (via Culture Crave), the Star Wars alum made it pretty clear he's done with that particular brand of cackling. He mentioned at the event that he was "done playing The Joker." He reinforced his stance that he won't voice the Gotham jokester "unless it's opposite Kevin Conroy's Batman."
Understandably, the movie icon doesn’t want to play The Joker if Conroy is no longer the one bringing Batman to life. The two voice actors had a natural chemistry that came through the TV screen in each of the Batman and other DC-related properties they co-starred in. So, the Last Jedi star retiring from voicing the sinister villain in the DCAU without his late co-star’s husky voice makes quite a bit of sense.
Mark Hamill tapped into his Crown Prince of Crime bag to sum up his feelings about Kevin Conroy’s death, and reportedly used an iconic BTAS line to summarize his thoughts:
Without Batman, crime has no punchline.
Using The Joker quote was a great way to let BTAS fans know why he’s no longer voicing the notorious Gotham supervillain. Besides voicing two of DC’s best-known characters, Hamill and Conroy forged a friendship by sharing the beloved animated series’ legacy. The two actors shared time at conferences and conventions and talked about the show’s legacy.
Outside of Batman TAS, Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy voiced the characters across several movies and TV shows, including Justice League and Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. The last project they acted in together was the Cartoon Network series Justice League Action. Hamill last voiced The Joker in the latest Scooby-Doo series Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?, and has voiced other notable DC characters like The Spectre and Solomon Grundy.
While he’s done with The Joker, Mark Hamill isn’t done with voice work. He appeared on the 2023 movie schedule through Metalocalypse: Army of the Doomstar and The Boy and the Heron. Of course, TV isn’t too far behind as he appeared in hit animated series like Invincible and Futurama. If you want to reminisce about Hamill and Kevin Conroy’s time together, check out Batman: The Animated Series with an Amazon Prime subscription.
