Rainbow Crew is an ongoing interview series that celebrates the best LGBTQ+ representation on screen. Each instalment showcases talent working on both sides of the camera, including queer creatives and allies to the community.
Next up, we're speaking to Vera Drew, director, co-writer, and star of The People's Joker.
There are as many versions of the Joker as there are of Batman, the Clown Prince's longtime nemesis, but no other film has come as close to capturing the disruptive, anarchic spirit of this maniacal character as The People's Joker, an unofficial origin story that faced legal issues after its original premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) back in September 2022.
What's most impressive about The People's Joker is not how it overcame numerous obstacles to finally reach a wide release, but how Vera Drew – the star, co-writer and director of the film – has been able to make such a widely-beloved character so uniquely her own, and in particular, so relevant to her own trans coming-of-age story.
Despite how precious fans can be over their favourite comic book creations, the truth is that superhero lore has survived for as long as it has precisely because of how malleable it can be, how these mythic beings can shift and adapt across different eras, writers, and even mediums.
Drew understands this better than anyone, so by reimagining the Joker as an aspiring clown who's grappling with her gender identity, Vera's film taps into some core truths from the source material through a deeply personal prism that's arguably more true to the character than any interpretation we've seen in a good long while.
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Digital Spy caught up with Vera Drew to discuss how The People's Joker deconstructs everything from queer villain tropes to notions of heroism through a mixed media approach that channels the Joker's own deranged, fragmented psyche. We also chatted about the fan response, and perhaps most importantly of all, the status of a potential sequel.
With the distribution obstacles and the cancelled festival screenings, was there ever a time where you worried people wouldn't get to see the film on this scale?
In the immediate days after TIFF, I was definitely worried about the future of the movie and getting it out there. But also, the controversy of TIFF got us so much more press than we ever would have gotten otherwise, probably. There was a lot more hunger for the project, for people to specifically see it in theatres.
On one level, it was a little scary, but seeing how many people were exposed to the project pretty instantly after that... I pulled the movie from our TIFF press screenings after we premiered there, and a lot of that was just because I wanted to lay low for a second with the movie. We were supposed to play eight festivals that month or something crazy like that.
I was just nowhere near prepared for the exposure it got. The cut we had at TIFF was like a "fresh paint" version. It was very sloppy, so I really needed time to go back in and finish it, because I was also finishing the movie right before I left for TIFF. I hit 'export', I grabbed my bags and got in the car. My girlfriend had to cut me off from working on the movie so we could hit the road.
It's been a long journey. When it was in the limbo holding pattern that we were in for like a year, there were definitely moments where I worried about the future of the film. But we kept doing secret screenings. I did a little secret tour in Australia. Pretty much anytime I screened the movie and saw the response and how much it meant to people, I always knew it was going to get out there and that it was going to find the right distribution.
The mixed media approach is really interesting visually, and I imagine it came in part from a DIY necessity due to budget constraints, but it also speaks to the Joker's psyche in a very tangible way. Can you talk us through how the film channels Joker's anarchic spirit formally and stylistically as well as thematically?
A big influence on the structure and how the movie is framed narratively with a sort of channel surfing vibe is Natural Born Killers. It's one of my favourite movies and definitely not a movie that people think about when they're watching my sweet, gay, queer, coming-of-age comic book movie [Laughs].
But it was definitely on my mind. And so was Pink Floyd's The Wall. The through line between those two is that they're really affected mixed-media movies. Natural Born Killers especially.
Every single shot in that movie, between different shots, it'll cut to a 16mm shot and then a a video camera shot, then 35 mil, then an animated shot of Woody Harrelson fighting something. I had these perfect templates of this disparate style. There is a cinematic history to it.
I wanted The People's Joker to really embody that, and not only feel like as chaotic and colourful and weird the Joker can be as an archetype, but also, the different blend of all these different aesthetics is also what makes the movie itself just feel very clear and very trans.
It really is just a reflection of the community of artists that made it and there were just so many different styles that I had at my disposal. Pretty much every artist that worked on the film did not have aspirations of working in movies. These were just people that really loved the idea that I had and wanted to see this movie and were like, "Okay, let me lend you my genius and my craft to help you get there."
When I saw the artists we had at our disposal and just how many different styles, the challenge just really became finding the through line to unify everything. The mantra on this movie really was, "Yes, and?" Any time we'd get art from people, I'd never send it back.
I'd wake up one morning and get an email that says, "Here's the Batmobile I made. Does it look too much like a dick?" My response would always be something along the lines of like, "No, it doesn't look enough like a dick. Let's add some balls." That was the process in a microcosm [Laughs].
In the past, there's obviously been a lot of damaging tropes that associate queerness with evil and villainy, but The People's Joker revels in the anarchic, disruptive power of queerness, pushing back against some of the more sanitised representation we've seen in the last few years. How intentional was that?
It's weird because I don't really know if it was that intentional. I don't watch a ton of modern queer films or movies that have queer characters in them because of the reasons you described. Like a lot of them just feel very straight to me. I mean... You said "sanitised"; I said "straight" [Laughs].
I grew up in the '90s. The representation I had for trans people was The Jerry Springer Show and Howard Stern. I watched Jerry Springer every single day after school. I still consider myself a fan. But for me, coming into my gender and coming into my queerness, the road there felt very villainous, because I was coming into an identity that pop culture and my parents and religion and government insisted was sinful and vile and disgusting.
Trans people are villainised in this country, constantly, so why wouldn't shouldn't our art reflect that?
It's funny because during our secret screening run last year, I got the chance to meet a lot of filmmakers, which was really cool. But it was a little interesting to meet some queer filmmakers and see how they responded to the movie, just hearing phrases like "trans joy" and "I think we should be telling stories that aren't about trauma or trans stories that aren't about transition".
My whole thing is like queer artists should just, especially if you're making stuff that's as personal as what I made... I can tell whatever story I want, because it's my story. But also, being trans is very traumatic and there aren't a lot of movies about transition. I've seen very few movies that accurately depict what going through a gender transition is like.
I understand the impulse for artists to want to assimilate and make art that I think is palatable to people who aren't trans or cis or who are gay. But for me, my insistence is that you can do that in a genre space while still telling an honest story.
Like The People's Joker is a comic book movie. It's been called a lot of things the last couple of years [Laughs], but it just is a comic book movie. At the end of the day, it follows all the tropes. There's post-credit scenes and it very clearly follows the Joseph Campbell 'Hero's Journey'. It definitely is a little bit more of a self-conscious deconstruction of that, just because I'm a dork. To me, the way in is write an accessible story that has truth to it.
It's fascinating how you reposition Batman as someone who abused one of his former Robins. There's always been a case for that in the comics, of course, but here you make the toxic elements of that power dynamic between him and Robin explicit. Can you talk us through that decision more? And did you worry about pushback from fans?
Particularly the Batman being an abuser thing, that's definitely something I was nervous to do. I don't know that she really likes it when I say this, but I say it because I'm really proud of the choice we ended up making. But my co-writer Bri LeRose was one person who tried to talk me out of it.
She was like, "You have this scene in the middle of the movie where this character that we just met just goes into a monologue. We find out this really heavy piece of lore about him and it's really f**ked up when you actually think about it. You really see it play out."
I think Bri's concern with it was was what my concern ended up being, which is that it's a very heavy thing to throw in the middle of 90-minute dick joke movie. It made the job of balancing all those tones I think a lot harder, but it pushed me.
Particularly the childhood montages, when we see Joker as a kid in Smallville going through this f**ked-up Smilax version of conversion therapy. It just forced me to lean into the realism of those things even more. I like that the movie really tiptoes through a few minefields in the very short runtime that it has. Just because I think that's what queer art is supposed to be.
On the abuser side of it, the Mr J character, the former Robin dealing with post-traumatic stress, is inspired by a real person who I dated that had a lot of abuse in his history. I wanted to talk about what it was like to be with somebody like that. I wanted to do it in a way that was operatic.
Someone asked me earlier today if I consciously picked Joker or Batman because of how toxic the fandom is. The answer is 100% no. I was so naïve. When I saw Batman Forever at the age of six, it was one of the first movies I saw where I was like, "Okay, I think I can be a filmmaker because movies can be this colourful, but still be action-heavy and sexy and fun".
When Nicole Kidman was on screen, I felt represented. Like, "Why do I want to look like this woman? I'm a six-year-old boy. That's weird." That was a movie that cracked my "gender egg" so to speak.
Batman has been so integral and important to my identity for most of my life at this point. I'm a lifelong comic book fan. I think while I was making it, if I ever really thought about a hypothetical audience that was watching it, I was very naïve and always just thinking like, "Wow, Batman fans are gonna be so excited that we're talking about things like 'super-sanity'", or that we kind of parody The Emperor Joker arc in that graphic novel run.
There's definitely some of that, but it's definitely not universally beloved by Batman fans. Which is also funny too, because it's just like, if The Joker is a real person and you guys care about him so much, do you think he really cares about IP law? There's literally comic book story arcs where he's f**king around with it.
At the end, there's a sequel tease, but the film was made a few years ago now. In previous interviews you mentioned that you had ideas for a follow-up, but you weren't necessarily sure at that point. With all the time that's passed and the journey you've taken taken recently, do you have any updates?
I think I was probably just being coy when I said I wasn't sure. The sequel to The People's Joker is The People's Nightmare: Freddy vs Joker. That really did just start as a joke.
I love Freddy Krueger. He's probably my favourite movie monster of all time. All of those movies are just so wonderful and I love the Jason movies too. I always get shit for this, but my favourite Friday the 13th is the final Friday – Jason Lives.
A lot of people hate it. It's a canonical Friday the 13th movie but Jason's barely in it because he's possessing people. It's super gay too randomly at various points like when Jason ties somebody up and drips candle wax over them. So I, of course, think it's the best one.
That movie ends with Jason's mask in the dirt and Freddy Krueger's claw pops out of the ground and drags it under. For years after that, people were like, "When are we gonna get Freddy vs Jason?"
It all just came to me as a flash in in a second: "Oh my god, what if this movie ends with Freddy Krueger reaching out and grabbing Joker's hat because they both wear fedoras?" It really was just a joke I wanted to shoot. It wasn't going to be anything beyond that.
David Lynch talks all the time about ideas being like bait on a hook. Once you get one idea, it attracts more ideas and it just snowballs. As artists, we don't really know why this happens, but we should never question it. We should just create a new Google doc for all those ideas as they come.
While Bri and I were were writing this movie, pretty much every idea that we couldn't squeeze in, or things that were lore building or backstory things about Joker's mum or Joker's dad, they've all fallen under this category of saving it for the hypothetical sequel.
The way I see it — and I feel compelled to say this just because Freddy Krueger is another Warner Brothers property, so I don't want to necessarily poke the bear — but there is a fair use argument for this. Just because Freddy Krueger is a character who is burned alive by a bunch of parents because they all think he's a child predator. And we're living in a time where people like me are called a groomer for just being ourselves.
So in The People's Nightmare, there will be an element to it that's just about that and ancestral queerness. Trans people 20 or so years ago were getting burnt at the stake just for being who they are. Even more so than it happens now. Like sometimes just literally.
So that's what it'll kind of explore, but I'm so far away from wanting to actually make the thing. I think it's going to be something that I just casually write over the next couple of years. I have a lot of other stories I want to tell.
The People's Joker was me processing what it was like to come out as trans while working in an alternative comedy space. I'd really used comedy before as a grounds for me to explore queerness and explore identity, but I also got trapped in a lot of cycles of self deprecation and irony poisoning. So I wanted to really explore all that very directly in a big piece of colourful art, and explore even what my 20s were like and what growing up in the Midwest was like and all that.
There was decades of perspective and experience that really informed that story we're telling. Any sequel or anything I end up doing with these characters, I want to wait until I'm more into this next chapter and era of my life.
In many ways too, The People's Joker was just a giant chaos magic ritual. It feels like the story that I told in that movie is still kind of unfolding around me. The entire third act of The People's Joker is very close to what I went through at TIFF. Thematically, a lot of the lessons that my character learns in the movie I'm confronted with on a daily basis just trying to get this movie out there.
That sort of age-old struggle between art and commerce and individuality and expression and originality and then making something that's profitable or can be consumed. I've been experiencing the pure heroin version of it and it just feels like the story isn't done yet there.
But I'm so excited for when we can get back into this world just because I really fell in love with this version of these characters. I think where Joker is at at the end of the movie, we leave a lot of doors open for.
If people want to write fan-fiction or make their own fan versions of The People's Joker, I would highly encourage it. I'd love to have some non-canonical People's Joker fan-fiction out there. If you want to write slash fiction about Joker and Penguin getting together, go for it. I'm probably not going to come back into this world for another five or six years. It's also just exhausting [Laughs].
The People's Joker starts its US and Canada cinema release on April 5. A UK distributor has not yet been announced.
After teaching in England and South Korea, David turned to writing in Germany, where he covered everything from superhero movies to the Berlin Film Festival.
In 2019, David moved to London to join Digital Spy, where he could indulge his love of comics, horror and LGBTQ+ storytelling as Deputy TV Editor, and later, as Acting TV Editor.
David has spoken on numerous LGBTQ+ panels to discuss queer representation and in 2020, he created the Rainbow Crew interview series, which celebrates LGBTQ+ talent on both sides of the camera via video content and longform reads.
Beyond that, David has interviewed all your faves, including Henry Cavill, Pedro Pascal, Olivia Colman, Patrick Stewart, Ncuti Gatwa, Jamie Dornan, Regina King, and more — not to mention countless Drag Race legends.
As a freelance entertainment journalist, David has bylines across a range of publications including Empire Online, Radio Times, INTO, Highsnobiety, Den of Geek, The Digital Fix and Sight & Sound.
