Variety spoke with Gal Gadot at the Elle Women in Hollywood Event and this is what she had to say:

“Rob looks amazing,” Gal Gadot told me last night at Elle’s Women in Hollywood event at the Academy Museum when I asked if she had seen the new “The Batman” trailer. “I love his voice and I love the whole tone of everything.

You’re not alone there Gal.

Rachel Smith from ETonline spoke with Jeffrey Wright during promotion for James Bond’s No Time To Die and this is what Jeffrey had to say about Rob and The Batman:

“Robert is gonna do his thing, and we were working within a Matt Reeves vision, so you know, Robert is doing what Robert does and it’s gonna be pretty badass I think,” Wright said of Pattinson’s portrayal of Gotham’s most famous superhero.

Wright shared that the pair fed off each other to create that infamous dynamic between Batman and one of his most trusted allies.

“I loved working with him, I love his take and his energy and the way that he kind of brought different levels to different parts of the story,” Wright shared. “And we work off of one another.”

“I just tried to give him Gordon things, and he did his Batman thing,” he continued.

Batman is Coming and we can’t wait.

Jeffrey Wright spoke to Haute Living about his latest roles and this is what he had to say about The Batman:

“It’s nice to see that Wright’s sense of humor is still intact, especially given the hardships of his last year, and given that there wasn’t much to be found on his last production, The Batman, a concurrent topic throughout all three of our interviews, as it was ongoing. “There was a bit of levity here and there [on that set], but it was a pretty dogged workplace, I have to say. I do my best to kind of undermine the seriousness, but it was reasonably pressurized. Still, I think we managed it pretty well. We did what we had to do, and we were there to do it.”

That included much more strict Covid-19 protocols. No one outside the cast or crew was allowed to do a drive-by on set. Each person was tested every single day, and N95 masks were required by everyone at all times, outside of the actors filming a particular scene. There were ten-minute breaks for ventilation, which prolonged the process, and very controlled movements around the studio. Entirely new facilities were built to mitigate the spread of the virus, and each actor had his or her individual pod to do hair and makeup.

And the hard work paid off; the production was safe post-Pattinson testing positive, and the film has managed to stay relatively under wraps. Just like its cast and crew, in a sense. “I have not seen Matt Reeves’, our director’s, face since March of last year. He was fully covered and protecting himself, because he has that responsibility on his shoulders,” Wright says.

While some parts of The Batman were a nightmare, others were a complete dream. “I think [this film had] the X factor, which was being unified around a common purpose,” Wright says, adding, “The thing we haven’t seemed to crack here in the States, and in certain parts of the U.K., even now, is that idea of being unified against this pathogen, so it was gratifying to recognize that we were all in it together — we were united around this thing — and we looked after one another and got through it together, at least on that set.” He hastens to add, “I don’t think I would like to do another film in that way, but we got through it together.”

We can’t say we’re surprised. Life imitates art sometimes, no? The film revolves around Batman’s second year of fighting crime and rallying the citizens of Gotham City against the corruption around them. They, too, are in it together.

The film, like so many of Wright’s projects, boasts a truly fabulous all-star cast that also includes Zoë Kravitz, Paul Dano, John Turturro, Peter Sarsgaard, Andy Serkis and Colin Farrell. And while there’s been a big to-do about the decision to cede previous Batman Ben Affleck’s cape and cowl to Pattinson, it isn’t the only casting choice fans are buzzing about: much has been made of Wright being cast as the first Black Commissioner James “Jim” Gordon in the DC Comics universe. Which, quite frankly, he finds to be asinine. He hasn’t reinvented the wheel, and he doesn’t feel this is a conversation we should be having in the 21st century.

While promoting The French Dispatch in Telluride, Jeffrey Wright also spoke about The Batman. Below are excerpts from IndieWire’s interview:

Jeffrey Wright remembers the moment last year when the UK production of “The Batman” shut down. The 55-year-old actor was a few months into playing police commissioner Jim Gordon for director Matt Reeves’ reboot of the DC Comics character when suddenly, in between takes, one of the actors coughed.

“Every head in the room swiveled toward that,” Wright said during an interview from a picnic table at the Telluride Film Festival, where he was promoting his role in Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch,” which screened earlier in the weekend. “And I was spraying that whole room, so if I had it that particular day, everybody would’ve had it. We shut down the next day.”

Production on “The Batman” proved to be a constant rollercoaster for everyone involved, as the temporary delay last March turned into a six-month halt; three days after it resumed in September, an actor tested positive. (Most reports indicated that star Robert Pattinson was the one who got sick, though neither Warner Bros. or Pattinson’s representatives ever confirmed it.)

Wright said that he felt an immediate panic during the initial shoot and reached out to producer Dylan Wright with his concerns. “I was having conversations with him where I was like, ‘Hey, man, what exactly are we going to be doing here going forward?’” Wright said. “At that time, there were no travel restrictions from the UK, but the numbers were rising. I called my agent and said, ‘We have to get out of here. We may be isolated here. There’s no way in hell we’re going to be shooting. It’s about to go down.’”

Despite the hiccup with the positive test last fall, Wright said he was impressed by the new set of safety measures when the shoot got back into full swing two weeks later. “We went back to testing three times a week, then it became three times a week and N95 masks required at all times except when we were filming,” he said. “There were breaks and ventilation requirements and separate spaces for hair and makeup. We took it very seriously and were respectful. We got it done safely.”

…

Despite the differences in scale, Wright said he detected a lot of similarities between Anderson and “The Batman” director Reeves. “While one film is perhaps perceived as having more of an arthouse vibe and the other is anything but, there are similarities that exist between them. Both very specific and very clear in their visions,” he said. “They are demanding in the best way. Same shit, different set.”

Wright said he responded to Reeves’ ability to inject real-world events into the superhero genre. “I saw the themes around corruption and class tensions and all of the things that he wanted to bring from the outside into this world so it had some relevance,” he said. “It’s bringing fiction into non-fiction in a way that’s balanced and really cool.” He described the script as presenting a Gotham “unlike Gothams we’d seen before. It was a Gotham we could touch. The way the Batmobile was described, I understood the aesthetic we were going for was something really palpable. If you squint your eyes in some backstreet of New York, you could see it appear.”

Wright was mum on details about the next Anderson project (“Give me your email and I’ll send you the script,” he joked) as well “The Batman” itself. “Everything has become super-secret,” he said. “On ‘The Batman,’ we had like five layers of encryption to figure out what we were filming the next day.”

… For now, though, it’s the 2022 release of “The Batman” that he’s anticipating as an antidote to the challenges of the past year and a half. “We can have faith in the Batman when we can’t have faith necessarily in each other,” he said. “In the history of human events, it seems that it’s always the end of the world. But I think perhaps that’s because we predicated it. We have met the enemy and it is us.”

When rumours first started circulating in February 2019 about Rob being in the running to portray Batman there were a lot of cynics (even in the fandom) who just didn’t or couldn’t believe Rob would leave his indie world behind to front the face of another franchise. Yet here we are in 2021 waiting patiently for the release of the first film. I thought I would do a roundup of Rob talking about why he pursued the role, what drew him to it and what he’s hoping to achieve. Here’s what Rob has had to say thus far:

VARIETY – 3 September 2019 (watch HERE at 2.51):

“What About ‘The Batman’ with Matt Reeves?”

“I really like Matt Reeves and his set up for it. I mean, it’s an interesting direction and it’s something from the comics which hasn’t been really explored yet. Yeah it’s kind of crazy shoes to fill. I mean it’s interesting what the different directions he can take with it and the kind of fit in a somewhat quite specific character – there’s actually quite a lot of leeway I mean when you look at all the different tones of all those movies and the TV shows. You can do quite a lot with it.

Yeah, Batman was really the only kind of superhero who I really had any kind of connection with when I was growing up and really from the Tim Burton ones I was just kind of obsessed when I was a kid. I don’t know it’s very very daunting. It’s weird I’m quite glad I’m doing Chris’s movie right now so I’ve got something else to be nervous about as I don’t have quite enough anxiety space in my head to really get too anxious about it yet. So I’m kind of quite happily just like figuring out how to do things without really thinking about the pressure yet.

Where were you when you learned you were going to be cast as the next Batman?

I think my first day with Chris Nolan which is pretty insane.

NYTIMES (Kyle Buchanan – 19 October 2019 (PRINT Here)

BBC ARABIC NEWS – 22 October 2019 (watch HERE)

Why have you shifted back to big budget films?

Batman was kind of a surprise to me. Now that I’m starting to get into it, I don’t want to approach it as if it’s that kind of a big studio thing … I want to approach it in exactly the same way, I want it to be frightening – something which you lose yourself in. I think it’s more difficult to do because it’s such a familiar character to lots of people but I think, if you can find a place to lose yourself in it then I think it’s really exciting.

INQUIRER (Ruben V Naples – 25 October 2019 (PRINT Here)

And for a part in which your face is basically covered, there is something quite simple about the character in lots of ways. But to see the scope of how many different people have interpreted it, it could be put into so many different genres—it can be played for laughs, for anything. I thought Christian’s idea was absolutely brilliant. I’ve got a little idea of it (his take of Batman), but we’ll see how it works.

VARIETY STUDIO ACTOR ON ACTOR WITH JENNIFER LOPEZ- 14 November 2019 (watch HERE at 24.46)

JLo: … Now you’re about to play Batman was it a choice to kind of move away from [large studio films] for awhile and why Batman were you ready to get back into that big thing again?

… Even my agents were like, I was very very focused on it I don’t know why I kind of just kept coming back into my head. It’s probably like 2 years ago, and even my agent was like really?

JL: You wanted to do Batman so you sought out the part – oh I didn’t know that?

Yeah. Well not sought it out directly but I was interested in it. … I knew they were doing another one and it just really appealed to me and there’s just something – there was definitely – I don’t know what is that happened inside me but I kind of want to do – it’s a different feeling when you know there’s an audience who has – there’s anticipation from an audience that’s already there and it’s a different kind of pressure. I like doing something which an audience doesn’t know that it wants and try to get it out to them. And that’s a whole different thing, but there’s a competitive side as well when you just know that everyone’s kind of going “oh yeah you wanna play Batman”. And it’s kind of fun. The challenge of it is kind of interesting. … Whenever I see the little action figure or something I still haven’t got my head around it yet. …

JLO: I think you’re going to be an awesome Batman, because he’s a dark character …

I have no interest whatsoever in playing someone who is heroic. The only time I want to play someone who an audience knows they’re supposed to like is when they really shouldn’t like them. … He’s a very very troubled person – there’s very few of sort of a character who is regarded by everyone as a heroic character, most of them know that they need to save the day, that they’re saving the world and they know they’re good, and I always found it interesting that Batman he’s always struggling a little bit especially in some iterations of the story and he doesn’t know if he’s that great or not and that’s kind of interesting. Walking the line all the time.

The LA Times recently spoke to Henry Golding who had this to say about his hopes for his career trajectory and admiring Robert Pattinson:

Q. Do you have a plan for your career trajectory?

To be honest, not really. Everybody has such a unique journey, right? I mean, look at Robert Pattinson. He’s phenomenal. Obviously [he had] the commercial success of ‘Twilight’ and then he completely reinvented himself and started doing much more auteur films. And now he’s like one of the best actors of the generation.

Everybody has a journey, but I definitely find inspiration in other people’s work and how they’re able to change the direction of their career. And sometimes it starts with the choices. That’s what’s important about saying no and yes to certain projects, because if you’re aiming for something, you really have to set that North Star.