Comedian Marc Maron opened up about his eye-opening experience filming scenes with Robert De Niro for Joaquin Phoenix ‘s 2019 iteration of Joker , noting it was “demystifying” to see how the legendary actor works on set. Speaking to Jason Ritter on a recent episode of his WTF? podcast, Maron revealed it took several takes for De Niro to film his scenes as he could not remember his lines. “I was literally watching him, because I was on the set all week, and he’s playing that talk show host,” Maron told Ritter.
“He doesn’t know his lines, and they’re doing it over and over again. It was totally demystifying De Niro to me, because I’ve watched him my whole life.” De Niro starred in the Todd Phillips ‘ film as Arthur Fleck’s (Phoenix) favorite late night host Murray Franklin, who invites Fleck onto the show to perform his stand-up material.
Maron continued, “Obviously he’s a great actor, but they understand something – people who live their lives on-camera and have been doing it that long – because I’m watching and I’m like, ‘This is a disaster. How are they going to cut this together?’ He knew that it was all going to cut up right. He’s been on set so many times where he’s just going to do it and do it and do it and they’ll find one.
” Ironically enough, Phoenix’s character was inspired by De Niro’s work with Martin Scorsese . But the two actors did not always see eye to eye while making the film. In fact, Phoenix told Vanity .