A lot of great actors have played Batman over the years, but for many fans, there's no one better than Kevin Conroy. He's voiced the Caped Crusader in everything from Batman: The Animated Series to the Arkham video games, but finally got to play a live-action Dark Knight in Crisis on Infinite Earths.
His Batman wasn't a hero, though, and had become a serial killer clearly broken by years of fighting crime in Gotham City. Talking to Michael Rosenbaum on his podcast, Conroy admitted it could have gone better, but revealed he signed up without ever seeing a screenplay for the secretive crossover.
"The fans were not happy about that. They didn’t like seeing that version of Bruce Wayne," he explained. "But for me it was fun, it was a lot of fun to sort of stretch my acting chops a little bit. They didn’t tell me anything about the Batman. They just said he was the Batman in the future, an old Bruce Wayne. I said, ‘You mean like in Batman Beyond old Bruce Wayne?’ They said, ‘No, he’s not 80. But he’s older and he’s in bad shape.’"
"They’re so guarded with their scripts, the studios, they don’t give them out," the actor continued. "So they didn’t give me anything. I got the script basically when I was about to get on a plane to fly to Vancouver to do the show, I hadn’t seen anything. I said yes because I was so excited to do something on camera again [after] 25 years."
Despite that negative reaction from fans, Conroy was still grateful of the chance to play any version of Batman on screen. "I was in this suit of armor that was an external spine because his back had been broken by Superman. And I didn’t know that was going to happen. So it was full of surprises. I didn’t know I was going to try and kill Supergirl. He was dark. He was dark."
Were you disappointed with how Batman was portrayed in Crisis on Infinite Earths? It certainly wasn't ideal, but Conroy did a fantastic job in the role, and it was an undeniably fun cameo.
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