Robert Downey Jr. had a meeting with Christopher Nolan to discuss playing the Scarecrow in 2005’s Batman Begins.

Before working together on Oppenheimer, the Iron Man star met up with the Inception filmmaker to discuss playing the Batman villain in his trilogy. However, Downey Jr. knew from the meeting that he wasn’t going to get the role.

“I’m pretty sure that I heard like, ‘There’s this role, Scarecrow,’ and I was like, ‘I’m Scarecrow,'” he said during a recent talk at the American Cinematheque theatre in Los Angeles. “I then remember meeting (Nolan) for tea, and I was like, ‘He doesn’t seem like he’s really leaning in on this interview.’ And he was polite and all that, but I mean, you know, you can tell when someone is kind of like, ‘It’s not gonna go your way.'”

The role of Scarecrow went to Cillian Murphy, who had originally auditioned for the Caped Crusader.

“It was clear to me from the beginning that I wasn’t Batman material,” the Peaky Blinders star told Entertainment Weekly last year. “It felt to me that it was correct and right that it should be Christian Bale for that part. But I remember the buzz of trying on the suit and being directed by (Nolan). Those tests were high production values.”

Many years after Downey Jr. and Nolan’s first meeting, they ended up working together on last year’s Oppenheimer, starring Murphy.

Murphy and Downey Jr. are currently nominated for Oscars for their performances, while Nolan is up for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.

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