Popverse's top stories of the day

• How Disney+'s What If...? is the moonshot for the next 50 years of Marvel Studios & the MCU
• Watch: Dune: Prophecy's Desmond Hart explained: His secret identity, his past, and his possible future [SPOILERS]
• Dune: Prophecy's Desmond Hart explained: His secret identity, his past, and his possible future [SPOILERS]

When you watch Prime Video’s Batman: Caped Crusader, you might imagine that the voice cast instinctively fell into their roles without any preparation or nerves, they sound so natural — but as Popverse found out from talking to Hamish Linklater (Batman), Minnie Driver (The Penguin), and Jamie Chung (Harley Quinn) at San Diego Comic-Con 2024, that wasn’t the case.

“It was so weird,” Linklater admitted of his audition to become the latest Dark Knight. “I just sat in my car, and, like, did it over and over and over and over and over again, and played it back over and over and over and over again, until I was like, ‘Oh, that kind of sounds… right…?’ And then I just pushed it away from me and knew that I would never get the part. And then there was some error at headquarters, I guess.”

“I did have a lot of inspirations,” shared Driver of the latest version of the Penguin. “There are a lot of people in my life who have really interesting voices — I was thinking about Upper East Side New York, I was thinking about, definitely a very vintage way of speaking, like movie stars from the ‘40s and the ‘30s. That’s kind of where I began. She has a big voice. She’s a big person, and she has a big voice. It’s kind of fun thinking about that.”

“I went back to all of Bruce Timm’s animation in the ‘90s. Arleen Sorkin did such an incredible job, and we wanted to be very respectful and pay homage, and, of course, how can you not be influenced by that, growing up watching that? That’s kind of how all the other Harleys, all the others, the live action actors, have played her — especially the accent,” Chung said. “But Bruce Time was very specific about wanting to do something; flipping the script, having Dr. Harleen Quinzel be the joyful kind of unhinged, unpredictable, but disarming character, with that kind of voice quality, and then have Harley Quinn be really menacing and slow and purposeful and manipulative. So it is very, very different, but that was a creative choice that [Timm] decided to do, and I think we did the right thing by going in that direction.”

Watch the video above to find out more from the cast — including what kind of a role Linklater is looking for next, and what Jamie Chung is geeking out on right now. (Spoilers: she has good taste.)

Get a fuller San Diego Comic-Con experience with a full rundown of our SDCC 2024 stories, as well as all the big SDCC 2024 news, how to make the most out of San Diego Comic-Con, and the real burning question: how much does it actually cost to go to SDCC?