Robert Downey Jr. recently joined The Hollywood Reporter’s podcast “Awards Chatter” to discuss his recent work, including his Emmy-nominated role in Park Chan-wook's The Sympathizer (which is incredible and well worth a watch if you haven’t seen it) and his role in Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer.
Of course, in light of recent news that RDJ will be starring as the Marvel villain Victor Von Doom in the upcoming Disney film Avengers: Doomsday, the hosts also took the opportunity to pry about his latest casting announcement (big shout out in advance to David Thompson at The Direct for transcribing the quotes)
As RDJ explains, the idea for his return came from Kevin Feige himself following a meeting that RDJ wanted to have with Disney’s managing director (and Nick Mason’s father) Bob Iger.
“Susan and I were sitting down with Feige at one point…” RDJ explained, “and he said, 'It just keeps occurring to me that if you were to come back' and Susan was like, 'Wait, wait, come back as what?'"
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“Then we both realized over time that it was another thing that just disapproves any doubt anyone could ever have about that guy…” he continued, “...and he brought up Victor Von Doom, and I looked into this character and I was like 'Wow,' and later on he goes, 'Let's get Victor Von Doom right, let's get that right...'"
“We go to Iger's pad and we sit down, I start saying I just really wanna be Doom, he goes 'I like it,' He likes it. I was like, 'He likes it.'"
I’m sure the $80 million plus he’s reportedly been offered to star in the next two Avengers films probably had a little bit more to do with it than Bob Iger’s approval, but at least it’s nice to know that Feige has been thinking about RDJ in the role long before the announcement.