Tim Curry’s Lost Joker in ‘Batman: The Animated Series’ Performance Resurfaces Online as Fans Mourn the Beloved Actor

Tim Curry spent more than five decades building one of the most eclectic résumés in Hollywood, terrifying and delighting audiences in equal measure across film, television, and stage. This week, that legacy is being honored in a very different way than usual, as fans revisit a role most people never actually got to hear him play.

Curry passed away Tuesday night at his home in Los Angeles at the age of 80, according to his longtime agent and manager Marcia Hurwitz. He had spent much of the past decade managing serious health issues stemming from a stroke he suffered in 2012, which left him wheelchair-bound and unable to walk in his later years.

Amid the outpouring of tributes celebrating his most iconic performances, one particular piece of Curry’s history has resurfaced and is now spreading widely online. A clip of Curry actually voicing The Joker for ‘Batman: The Animated Series,’ recorded before Mark Hamill was ultimately cast in the role, has been circulating as fans revisit what almost was.

Curry was the original actor hired to voice the character when the animated series was in production, and he actually recorded dialogue for several early episodes before being replaced. According to Bruce Timm, the show’s co-creator, Curry’s take on the character had initially impressed the creative team, delivering something that felt both funny and menacing after a string of auditions that leaned too heavily on Cesar Romero’s campier portrayal from the 1960s.

Ultimately, though, producer Alan Burnett couldn’t connect with Curry’s interpretation of the character, and the decision was made to recast the role. Voice director Andrea Romano later explained that Burnett simply couldn’t wrap his head around what Curry was doing with the performance, even though Timm had been reluctant to redo episodes that were already recorded.

Curry himself offered a different account of his exit over the years, claiming in a past interview that he was let go after developing a case of bronchitis that made the demanding vocal role too difficult to continue. Regardless of the reasoning, Hamill’s agent reportedly reached out shortly afterward to make his client’s interest in the role known, and the rest became animation history.

Hamill’s performance as The Joker went on to define the character for an entire generation, spanning multiple DC Animated Universe series, video games, and other projects for more than 30 years. Curry, despite losing out on the role, held no apparent grudge, later returning to voice other characters within the DC Animated Universe’s broader library of shows.

Most of Curry’s original Joker recordings were considered lost to history until they resurfaced years later in the documentary ‘The Heart of Batman,’ which featured commentary from Timm and fellow creator Paul Dini. Fans have since synced portions of that surfaced audio to matching animation from the series, giving longtime viewers a small glimpse of the alternate version of Gotham’s clown prince that almost existed.

That footage is exactly what’s being shared and celebrated now, with fans calling Curry’s performance a fascinating what-if moment in animation history even though it never made it to air in its original form. Between his work in ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show,’ ‘It,’ ‘Clue,’ and ‘Home Alone 2: Lost in New York,’ Curry’s willingness to embrace strange, larger-than-life characters clearly extended even to a role the world barely got to hear.

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