NEW YORK — To make his performance in “The Batman” soar, Jeffrey Wright says he drew inspiration from the city’s most prominent former police officer.
Wright stars as James Gordon in the upcoming superhero film, the only cop in Gotham who trusts Batman when new terrors wreak havoc in the fictional metropolis.
“Gotham is kind of a proxy for New York, and I thought about Eric Adams, our current mayor, for example, who happened to be the captain at one time of my neighborhood’s precinct,” Wright, a longtime Brooklyn resident, told the Daily News.
“He was one of the few, and certainly the most powerful, voices in blue that seemed to be speaking in line with the concerns of citizens about police brutality. ... He was an outlier in a way that Gordon is an outlier, so I thought about him as a reference, among others.”
Coming to theaters Friday, “The Batman” ushers in a new era for the DC Comics franchise, with Robert Pattinson suiting up as the titular caped crusader for the first time.
The movie is set toward the beginning of the partnership between Bruce Wayne, who is in his second year of fighting crime as Batman, and Gordon is a police lieutenant rather than Gotham’s commissioner.
“It’s a partnership of necessity,” said Wright, 56. “They both find themselves isolated in a Gotham where trust is a rare resource. There’s still some uncertainty between them. … Out of desperation, they come together to do their best for a desperate city.”
Directed by Matt Reeves, “The Batman” follows the emergence of a mysterious villain, the Riddler, who targets the city’s corrupt politicians and leaves puzzles for Batman and Gordon to solve.
“Matt really wanted to honor the evolution of ‘Batman’ the comic,” Wright said. “He wanted to celebrate the more narrative-focused elements of ‘Batman,’ and those being mystery-based. He wanted to celebrate Batman, the world’s greatest detective, because I think, as well, it makes for interesting filmmaking.”
The actor also referred to generations of “Batman” comics, beginning with the first issue, to learn the trajectory of his character before making the film, which also stars Zoe Kravitz as the vigilante Catwoman.
Wright, whose other roles include Felix Leiter in the James Bond movies and Bernard Lowe on HBO’s dystopian “Westworld” series, praised Pattinson for giving a nuanced performance that “breathes fresh breath” into the Dark Knight.
“His Bruce Wayne and his Batman couldn’t be more distinct,” Wright said. “He walked past me during this funeral scene. ... It’s the only scene that I have with him as Bruce Wayne. The others are with him as the Batman. I was like, who is that? I didn’t even recognize him, and it wasn’t so much because he wasn’t wearing the suit.
“He had this grace about him, this elegance about him, a haunted quality, and it seemed as though he was 3 inches, 4 inches taller than the Rob that I knew. His Batman has a more grounded, fierce thing to it.”
Wright says Reeves set out to make “a great film that also happened to be a Batman movie.”
“Yes, this is a comic book film, it’s a Batman film, it’s kinetic, it has a velocity to it,” Wright said. “But Matt wanted to use that, really, as a framework for more thematic explorations, psychological explorations, emotional explorations and also an exploration of social issues that are relevant today.”
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