The new ‘Joker’ is trans and fights fascist superheroes: ‘The US is an empire founded on racism and colonization’

Vera Drew is a woman, she’s trans, and she’s the new Joker. Not Jack Nicholson, Joaquin Phoenix, or Barry Keoghan. In The People’s Joker, she dons the wig (or wigs) and takes on Batman.

Drew also directs and writes this small queer film, which she told EL PAÍS she never imagined would be seen by “more than five friends in a basement.”

And she’s done it all without the blessing of Warner Bros., the owner of the Gotham universe where Batman’s stories unfold. Her movie is a parody, and its legality always precarious — even a month before release, when the studio called again. “We made a movie they would never make,” she says over video call.

Drew, 36, discovered she was trans while watching the much-maligned Batman Forever (1995) by Joel Schumacher, to whom she dedicates her film. While others focused on the superhero played by Val Kilmer, six-year-old Drew realized she wanted to be Nicole Kidman, one of the film’s leads.

That’s one of the stories revisited in The People’s Joker. The movie is a parody set in a world of fascist superheroes. Yet it’s also deeply personal for the filmmaker: “Several people have told me they went expecting a silly Batman comedy but that it moved them so much inside that they finally felt ready to explore their own gender.”

“The People’s Joker is a movie that does require you to come to it with an open mind. It’s not for everyone. But art doesn’t always have to be. Part of the problem with mainstream films is that they try too hard to have mass appeal. That’s not art. To me, we should all be really leaning into this niche specific art,” she explains.

Her Joker — a mix between the villain and his female counterpart, Harley Quinn — is an aspiring comedian in Gotham searching for her gender identity. It’s in a stand-up club that she finds her tribe (The Penguin, Riddler, and the rest of the villains), fights against the fascism of a Batman revealed as a sexual abuser, and plunges into a toxic relationship with a trans man inspired by Jared Leto’s Joker in the 2016 movie Suicide Squad.

This personal depth means her “anarcho-leftist” comedy never feels cynical. It’s simply a reflection of her love for this universe and its characters: “No one should parody something they don’t love, and I was obsessed with the mythology — and those myths need to be public,” she says from a bedroom that emulates the dream room in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks series, with herringbone flooring and a large red curtain surrounding an unmade bed. “Laura Palmer [the show’s protagonist] appears to me every night,” she jokes.

After the film’s first screening at the 2022 Toronto Film Festival, she received a letter from Warner prohibiting any further showings and threatening legal action over rights violations. The following year, just a month before its U.S.-wide release, Warner came after her again — this time asking her to change the title and limit the theatrical run.

“I don’t mind talking about it anymore — I’m at a point where I don’t want to hide anything, and it might help others making similar work. They were really concerned about the film conflicting with the release of Joker 2 [in 2024], but I realized they were never going to sue me, so I didn’t change a thing. They just wanted to intimidate me,” she says, now speaking with the confidence of someone who has secured international distribution.

Drew took her surname from her pre-transition name, which is also another plot thread in the movie. Like her character, before her longed-for leap into directing, she carved out a place in the comedy world: performing stand-up and working as an editor for comedians like Sacha Baron Cohen and the alt-comedy show Comedy Bang! Bang!. It’s why she knows exactly what she’s talking about when, in the film, she declares, “Never date a comedian.” The People’s Joker is set in a world where comedy is outlawed.

Her revolutionary act of comedic revenge even takes aim at the most iconic comedy show in the U.S., Saturday Night Live. “I know that pissed off a lot of people, but it’s part of free speech. The mainstream will always try to make sure things like this don’t get seen. Having a film where I can do everything has been empowering, and I like that other artists feel inspired to be transgressive.”

Shot against green screen with sets made from models and toys, the shoestring production is a mash-up of references, incorporating different styles of animation and puppetry. For the director, the mother–child relationship is the “foundation” of the film.

“It’s a mother-daughter love story. It really is about these two characters’ understanding. I think that’s why it works. In reality, it’s pretty grounded — it’s about finding your family as an adult, maybe reconnecting with your childhood and moving on,” she says of the film, which also takes on culture wars, drugs to sedate children, fake news, sexual abuse, and more.

But where did such a wild idea come from? Drew recalls it was in 2020, after seeing comments from Joker (2019) director Todd Phillips that infuriated her. He claimed — like so many before him — that “woke culture won’t let us be funny.” At first, the filmmaker planned to re-edit his movie into a montage of farts, but in the process she reconnected with her childhood love of Batman and the moment she discovered her trans identity. That made her want to tell an autofiction story that would laugh at everything — including those who complain comedy is too restricted, but can’t take a joke when it targets conservative America.

Her message couldn’t have come at a more urgent time. “It sucks to watch rights go backwards — because things were bad enough before. The whole ‘we have too much diversity’ argument is just wrong! These movies are almost impossible to make; there still aren’t the same opportunities you get as a heterosexual cisgender man. For me to be heard, I had to make something that was very loud and colorful and silly and obnoxious and also, like, legally questionable,” she says.

Drew admits that it’s easy these days to bow down and be afraid. “The U.S. has always been a fascist empire founded on racism and colonization. It’s just now being revealed. We see how someone like Trump takes advantage of marginalized cultures to set us back even further.”

Despite her initial reluctance and fear of seeing it, Drew surprisingly loved Joker 2 for its boldness in breaking away from what worked in the first film and for refusing to pander to the audience.

“I got excited, and I remembered again why I liked superhero movies: because they were weird. I don’t know if it’s true, but I really think they changed some jokes and parts of the plot in the reshoots because we had stepped on that a little bit in my parody.”

She was so fascinated that she believes Todd Phillips — the very person her film was reacting against — would actually like The People’s Joker: “We’re smoking the same stuff.”

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