Ben McKenzie Talks Jerome And ‘Gotham’ Season 4

by Chris Foti
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Fans of Fox’s Gotham already know that Jerome is returning to the show on March 8th in the episode “A Beautiful Darkness,” looking more and more like an amalgamation of Heath Ledger’s and Greg Capullo’s New 52 Jokers.

In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Gotham’s own Jim Gordon, Ben McKenzie, spoke about the return of one of the show’s most terrifying villains.

Jerome is one of our most beloved characters. The idea here was to really give the audience more time to enjoy and savor [Cameron Monaghan’s] performance…or performances?

Obviously, McKenzie is teasing fans with the performances, giving fans the perfect bait to tune into Jerome’s return to find out what he means. He continued on to discuss an alliance fans can expect to see Jerome make in his return.

He teams up with Scarecrow and Mad Hatter. You get a lot of villainous bang for your buck here at the end of season 4.

Villain team-ups are always fun, especially in the world of Batman, and it will be interesting to see how the Gotham versions of Scarecrow and Mad Hatter (a great pair on their own in Batman lore) work with the Jok…er…Jerome.

With the show’s fourth season coming to a close soon, McKenzie also spoke on how the show has found its stride and has continued to improve since it began. Many fans didn’t like what the show was doing and McKenzie admitted, at first, no one was really sure what the show was.

We’ve learned a lot over the four years. There were so many cooks in the kitchen initially, from the studio to DC to people on the ground making the show, that I think we struggled for a little bit to wrap our heads around what it is and what it isn’t. The characters are deep rooted in the world that we’re portraying, so now they can interact in all these interesting and unexpected ways.

We understand now that the audience seems to enjoy those relationships at their core. Gotham tells a uniquely, humorously dark tale. It’s a truly wild and dystopian version of the Batman sage that is more like the Tim Burton versions – it has that kind of wink and glean in its eye, as opposed to the colder but brilliant Nolan version. It’s not camp, but it’s also not afraid of being quite large and over the top with performances. I’m proud of where it’s gone.

A great pitch from one of the show’s leads. He really hits the nail on the head by saying they are telling their own Batman saga. If the viewer throws out their preconceived notion of the Batman mythos and take Gotham as it is, then they can enjoy a unique take and perspective of these characters.

Speaking of which, one detail every fan noticed when the show first began was the lack of a mustache for Ben McKenzie’s Jim Gordon. The glasses, mustache, and trench coat is the defining look of the character. In a promo image for the upcoming “A Beautiful Darkness”, it seems like the mustache might finally be making its appearances. Still waiting for his vision to go though…

Gotham airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET on Fox.

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