Gotham Interview: Cameron Monaghan On The Rise Of Jerome

The second season of Gotham, which begins at 8PM tonight (September 21) on FOX, has been subtitled “Rise of the Villains,” and one of those villains in Season 2 might possibly be the most popular Batman villain of all – The Joker.

Right now, though, the laughing and grinning joker is known as “Jerome,” and he is played on the series by Cameron Monaghan. When we see Jerome at Gotham Season 2’s start, he is in Arkham Asylum, and we quickly learn his role in the scheme of things.

“It’s not clear whether he wants to be a leader, or if he just can’t help but destroy every single thing around him,” Monaghan reflected to us last week before a Los Angeles screening of the Gotham and Minority Report premieres. “His personality is just this constant ticking time bomb. He goes from a guy who’s completely entertaining to be in a room with, to a guy you realize you don’t want to be in a room with anymore, to a guy you realize has already locked the doors and you’re not getting out of that room. That’s Jerome.”

Jerome’s effects are quickly felt on other characters. “I think this new villain, Theo Galavan, is definitely someone who Jerome very obviously admires for his utter sadism and his cold, calculating, devoid of humanity persona. I’d be curious to see who else. I think as Penguin becomes more and more dark and unhinged that perhaps that is someone who he would find quite entertaining, as well,” he said. There’s one character who Jerome might not get along with so well, though.

“I don’t think that Jerome would appreciate Edward Nygma’s structure,” Cameron said. “He’s not chaotic enough for him. It would probably be the reason he would butt heads with him. To be honest, he doesn’t play very well with other people, in general. Jerome has an infectious personality and a very specific brand of insanity that kind of either destroys the psyche or destroys the person of anyone he’s around. I don’t think that any of the effects that he’s going to have on [others] are positive,” he teased.

The role of Jerome and the speculation of the character being The Joker have grown Monaghan’s fan base, and that inspired Warner Bros. Television to ask the actor to make a surprise appearance at the “Night of DC Television” panel at this year’s Comic-Con. “They had told me that I was going to crash the panel; they had given me the line to say of ‘tell me, Mr. Gordon: Do you bleed’?” Cameron recalled. “Beyond that, there was not really any game plan; they had only really told me that part, the day that I got there. Initially, they were going to have me say it and then have me run off, but I thought that was a little bit forced, because I don’t think that Jerome is a guy who ever runs out of the spotlight. He’s a man who craves the limelight with every fiber of his being, so I asked the security guards to drag me off. It was so fun!”

So, is he the Joker? “There’s plenty of possibility,” Cameron hinted. “The only way to say it is that he either is or he isn’t, or maybe he represents the idea. Maybe in this universe, The Joker is not one specific man, but more of an idea, at least to this point. This is still very early in the mythology. Who knows where it’s going to go from here.”

“The great thing about this role is that it brings out the strengths in every single actor who plays it. I grew up obsessively watching the Batman animated series, and so there is a special place in my heart for what Mark Hamill did with the role,” he said, though he personally views the character as just “Jerome.” “I have to think of him as Jerome because, as it is, he is Jerome. In our scripts, he is Jerome. Whoever Jerome is, he’s a man who loves pain, and he loves to laugh at other people’s pain. That’s the driving component behind him. That’s what I go with,” he shared.

Ultimately, Monaghan is excited for fans to see Gotham Season 2. “I love the first episode, but I think it only gets better from there. I’m really excited for people to hopefully want to see how it all unfolds,” he said.

Gotham Season 2 premieres tonight on FOX! Take a look at some preview images here, and below, you can see a video preview of the “Rise of the Villains!”