‘Clayface’ Director James Watkins on the Tragic Ending, Joker Easter Eggs and His Star’s Secret Injury

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[This story contains spoilers for Clayface.]

The Clayface team has every reason to smile after its opening weekend, but none more so than director James Watkins.

Between topping its $44 million production budget with a $46.5 million global box office bow and earning a Certified Fresh badge on Rotten Tomatoes, the DC Studios movie has plenty to celebrate. But the bigger story is the audience response. While the genre pic earned a 75 percent critics score, its mark among verified moviegoers climbed to 94 percent. The film also scored an A- CinemaScore, an extreme rarity for the horror genre. For Watkins, the reception offers a happy ending to an unexpectedly challenging production process.

What compelled the British filmmaker to sell his wares to DC Studios bosses James Gunn and Peter Safran as the potential helmer of Clayface was a phrase coined by original screenwriter Mike Flanagan. The latter described his screenplay as “a tragedy in three acts,” a hook that inspired Watkins’ own pitch about the devolution of newly Oscar-nominated actor Matt Hagen into the malleable, monstrous foe of Batman. Watkins’ body-horror ideas even made Gunn, a horror vet, “wince” en route to landing the job.

For anyone familiar with Watkins’ filmography, his handle on tragic horror should come as no surprise. His breakout film, Eden Lake (2008), starring Kelly Reilly, Michael Fassbender and Jack O’Connell, is one of the bleakest, most devastating genre films of the 21st century. It also inspired the gut-wrenching ending of Christian Tafdrup’s Speak No Evil (2022), the Dutch-Danish psychological horror-thriller that Watkins reimagined for American audiences in 2024.

Unfortunately, Watkins faced his own personal tragedy in the middle of post-production on Clayface. He received a call informing him that his father, Dr. George Watkins CBE, had died without warning. Gunn and Safran immediately gave Watkins the space he needed to tend to his family’s loss. The DC Studios co-chairs recently extended similar grace to Clayface producer Matt Reeves during a private family crisis of his own amid production on The Batman Part II.

“We were in the thick of it, and my dad died very suddenly. As you can imagine, it was difficult,” Watkins tells The Hollywood Reporter. “James and Peter reached out and afforded me time and were very kind at a point when there was a film to finish. So I’ll never forget that.”

Another component of Watkins’ winning pitch centered on Matt Hagen’s loss of identity and livelihood, a universal fear that can stem from physical maladies, technological disruptions or uncontrollable economic conditions. In Hagen’s case, a mobster disfigures his face, effectively ending his acting career just as it’s reaching new heights. Behind the scenes, Clayface star Tom Rhys Harries was quietly concealing a significant knee injury to avoid jeopardizing a career-altering role, adding another meta dimension to the film.

Watkins and his team remained unaware of the Welsh actor’s torn ACL until Rhys Harries came clean while filming a sequence in which Matt flees a movie premiere and gets hit by a car.

“He still did the jump and the fall, but he was frank about it. We were like, ‘We obviously don’t want to create a lifelong injury for you.’ So we had to finesse how we did the stunt,” Watkins recalls. “But it’s not like he was cast to play Premier League or NFL football. He’s acting, so [having foreknowledge of his injury] wouldn’t have made any difference to me. Tom was absolutely the right actor for the role.”

Hagen eventually seeks out Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie) for an experimental procedure involving AI nanocells, which are intended to repair and regenerate damaged tissue. The results are initially astonishing, but the treatment comes with side effects whenever Hagen succumbs to negative thoughts and emotions. In an effort to gloat vindictively in front of his former agent and collaborators, his new face begins to melt at a movie premiere he crashed.

The incident sends him straight back to Caitlyn’s lab, prompting him to overdose on her nanite treatment. That fateful decision further transforms him into a volatile shapeshifter whose preexisting lack of impulse control is further exploited by the nanos coursing through his veins.

Getting into spoilers, Matt’s escalating thirst for vengeance comes to a head at a nightclub owned by the mob boss who sliced up his face in the first place. With the story hurtling toward its tragic conclusion, Watkins developed this showstopping set piece during the later stages of rewriting Mike Flanagan’s script. He worked on the revisions with Hossein Amini, the Drive screenwriter with whom he had previously created McMafia. The goal of Matt’s revenge tour was to let audiences revel in the satisfaction of vengeance before flipping the script in the end.

“It came to me quite late in the process. I really wanted to beef up Matt’s journey upstairs [to confront mobster Markos Szabo]. I kept talking about capturing the feeling of Robin Hood movies, or a film like El Cid, where they storm the castle,” Watkins says. “I also wanted to show Matt discovering and experiencing the dark glee that comes with his powers. He’s been on quite a tough ride to that point, and I wanted to give the audience permission to enjoy the payback.”

Matt taking down the mobsters who wronged him may qualify as an understandable form of street justice, but his next move is unjustifiable. He murders Caitlyn’s fiancé, Gotham PD Detective John Borelli (Max Minghella), despite Borelli’s efforts to secure legal justice for Matt. That changes only after the detective begins to suspect that Matt has been targeting the key figures who destroyed his life.

John, however, was already caught between a rock and a hard place. Caitlyn’s use of an untested procedure on Matt meant that arresting him could also implicate her. But as Watkins points out, Matt’s decision to murder John in his nanobot-altered state of mind isn’t primarily about avoiding criminal charges. Instead, he has developed a reverse Florence Nightingale effect and become obsessed with the doctor who treated him. (If Caitlyn hadn’t returned home when she did — leaving Matt no time to get rid of John’s body — was Matt prepared to pose as John indefinitely?)

“The nanos are taking over him, and these primal impulses are bubbling up within him. From his point of view, it’s explicable,” Watkins says. “It doesn’t mean we have to like it, but he’s acting out of some combination of self-defense, love and a weird obsession. He’s just gone at that point.”

Below, during a conversation with THR, Watkins also discusses the Joker-related Easter Eggs from Tim Burton’s Batman (1989), as well as Aaron Paul’s ephemeral cameo.

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James Gunn reposted THR’s Clayface review on Instagram and captioned it by saying “what a pleasure” it’s been to work with you. Generally speaking, I’m sure you’ve heard all the horror stories about working within executive-controlled cinematic universes, so is it safe to say you had a pretty ideal experience by comparison?

I had an excellent experience, and it’s really easy for me to say that. I’m not trying to fly the flag or do some party line; I genuinely did. Everything was straightforward with James, Peter, Matt [Reeves], Lynn Harris and everybody on the whole team

When I first read Mike Flanagan’s script, I really wanted to lean into and honor the fact that he called it “a tragedy in three acts” — but still do everything you can to root for the character. So after I read Mike’s script, I pitched a version of the film that everyone signed up to do, and they supported me all the way through in trying to achieve that version. I say to people, if you don’t like the film, you can’t blame them. It’s on me because I had all the support.

It also sounds like they were human beings. Clayface is dedicated to your late father, Dr. George Watkins CBE, and James and Peter Safran were very accommodating when you had to step away during post?

Yeah, they were. We were in the thick of it, and my dad died very suddenly. As you can imagine, it was difficult. James and Peter reached out and afforded me time and were very kind at a point when there was a film to finish. So I’ll never forget that. They were very classy about it.

I’m very sorry for your loss.

Thank you.

As mentioned, you signed on at a time when there was a Mike Flanagan-written draft, and you eventually brought in your previous collaborator, Hossein Amini, for rewrites. But when people hear Mike’s name, they think, It’s Mike Flanagan. Why wouldn’t you bet on his screenplay?

I understand that.

However, I’ve been doing this long enough to know that there’s no such thing as a “locked script.” If there isn’t an on-set writer making tweaks, then the filmmakers and actors are the ones tinkering. Then the edit is known as the final rewrite. So even if you stuck with Mike’s draft by the time cameras rolled, changes were inevitable.

Correct. It is exactly that. The film we made is very much in line with Mike’s brilliant script. That’s why I wanted to make the film. I’d be stupid to sign on and go, “Well, let’s just completely re-engineer it.”

Scorsese says a director’s job is to make the audience fall in love with their obsessions. I just did a Q&A with director Kevin Macdonald the other day, and as directors and as people, we perceive things slightly differently. If Mike would go somewhere naturally, I might go here and Kevin might go there. It’s just the nature of it.

Then there’s the practicalities of production. You’re building sets, and if there’s seven scenes set in the science lab, you’re like, “Well, can we compress those into four?” You’re also working with the actors on finding and refining things, so it’s always evolving.

I’m reading Sam Wasson’s book on Chinatown at the moment, and if you read about the evolution of that film, it’s exactly that. There were so many iterations of Robert Towne’s screenplay before you got the actual finished film.

Sicario had a Taylor Sheridan script that the entire town bid on, and Denis Villeneuve, Josh Brolin and Benicio del Toro still didn’t hesitate to rewrite scenes on the day. So I’m not sure people fully understand that a script is a living document.

People don’t understand that. There are practical realities on set, and they just naturally evolve. There’s no shade on anybody or anything. It’s just a natural evolutionary process of discovering things. If the script says there’s a brick wall — and the [otherwise perfect] building you’re scouting doesn’t have a brick wall — then you’re going to have to change it.

I just spoke to a director named David Leitch, and he recently worked with Nicholas Hoult at a time when everyone knew that Nick had a torn ACL. You, on the other hand, apparently did not know that your lead actor, Tom Rhys Harries, was privately dealing with his own torn ACL. Was there a point during filming where you spotted the hitch in his giddy-up?

There certainly was. There’s a moment in the film when Matt gets hit by a car, and that’s when it came out. Tom had a quiet word with the stunt man about it.

For the car stunt, you do a bit of the stunt with Tom, and then you do a bit of it with a stunt man. So the stunt team would hit Tom with a crash pad to get the first reaction, and then you’d overlap it with a real car hitting a stunt man. But Tom was like, “The worst possible thing you can do is hit somebody on the leg and take them out at that angle.” He still did the jump and the fall, but he was frank about it. We were like, “Yeah, we obviously don’t want to create a lifelong injury for you.” So we had to finesse how we did the stunt, but it was quite straightforward.

But it’s not like he was cast to play Premier League or NFL football. He’s acting, so [having foreknowledge of his injury] wouldn’t have made any difference to me. I thought Tom was absolutely the right actor for the role. I also suspect that some of these film medicals don’t go that deep.

Matt lost his career after his face was disfigured, and the actor playing him withheld a major injury to avoid losing a career-changing role. The parallels between life and art are quite striking.

Absolutely. It was always quite meta. Tom just went on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to promote the movie, and he sent me a screenshot of him walking out on stage and waving at the audience. He tagged it with “very meta,” because it’s literally the same shot as when Matt goes on The Vic Chissler Show. It was so uncanny. We had referenced all these late-night shows and stolen their iconography, so it came around full circle.

Well, Tom and Nick are going to have a lot to talk about at the DCU Christmas party.

(Laughs.) Yes, indeed.

Speaking of body horror, I can’t imagine there was time or budget to reset the prosthetics umpteen times, so was there a lot of pressure to nail some of those moments in one go?

It was never one go, but in prep with the ADs, the question was always, “How many takes have we got? What’s the reset time? How long will it take to shoot this?” And usually they’d go, “It’s a 45-minute reset.” And then we were like, “Is there anything else we can shoot during that time? Can we turn the camera around on something else?” But often, when they say it’s 45 minutes to reset, they’re usually giving themselves a little bit of flex. It was usually 30 minutes to reset.

Beyond the practicalities of budget and time, it’s also performance. If Tom has contact lenses and [prosthetics] on, his eyes or his skin might start to dry out after a certain amount of time. So there was a practical limit on it.

Matt’s lack of impulse control is the ultimate issue here, but I do appreciate the manner in which you utilized AI as the unpredictable activating agent in all this. Within the past few weeks especially, we’ve learned just how deceptive and unreliable AI can be, so your movie accurately underscores that danger.

Any horror film, to be interesting, should tap into anxieties that we all have. Whether it’s social horror or technological horror, you want to get under people’s skin. In this case, we do it literally. So the body horror of it all relates to the real fears of our bodies betraying us and then the use of AI in medicine. Who knows, maybe it will be able to provide solutions down the line, but it’s a real fear that we have right now. What are the guardrails, if any? So [AI’s role in the creation of Clayface] was definitely one of the elements that appealed to me about trying to pull this cautionary tale off.

The third-act nightclub sequence is a showstopper. How complicated was it to piece that together given all of Matt’s shapeshifting?

Practically, it was very complicated, and we tried to do as much of it as possible in camera. If somebody went behind a pillar and somebody else came out the other side, it required a lot of planning to capture a moment like that in camera. So it was most exhausting because I was still shooting other material and also trying to work out how to shoot and storyboard the entire sequence. We had storyboards in the corner of the stage, and I’d work on them during lunch or whenever I could. I’d even take them home to make tweaks during weekends. So I’m really proud of it, but it was probably the most daunting sequence I’ve ever shot.

It came to me quite late in the process. I really wanted to beef up Matt’s journey upstairs [to confront mobster Markos Szabo]. I kept talking about capturing the feeling of Robin Hood movies, or a film like El Cid, where they storm the castle. Before the hero can reach the keep and rescue Maid Marian or whoever, they have to fight their way through the outer defenses. I also wanted to show Matt discovering and experiencing the dark glee that comes with his powers. He’s been on quite a tough ride to that point, and I wanted to give the audience permission to enjoy the payback.

Unless my eyes deceive me, how did you get Aaron Paul to show up for a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot as Matt’s dad, “Jimmy One-Nut”?

He is a very nice man and a wonderful actor. The team was talking about the casting of Jimmy One-Nut, and I said, “Well, what about Aaron Paul?” It just so happened that he was between Paris and London. He was not on the other side of the planet from where we were shooting in England.

He lives in Paris now.

There you go. So he said, “Yeah.” And he was such a gentleman. I’d love to work with Aaron again. He came in, and it’s just the moment, right?

Did he ever comment about the name Jimmy One-Nut?

(Laughs.) He had a good sense of humor about it. He didn’t mind. [Writer’s Note: Minutes after this interview ended, EW reported that Paul actually filmed a number of flashbacks that hit the cutting room floor.]

Is the idea behind the final fantasy with Caitlyn that he can not only turn himself into another person, but he can simultaneously mold himself into a second person if he so pleases?

Yeah, there’s been some sort of growth [since we saw his remnants go down the storm drain]. If you look at the comics, Clayface gets quite big. He’s massive in some of them. So whatever happened during that kill-switch moment, there’s been this amplification of the monster. So maybe there’s just more of him, and he’s able to use a bit of him to create somebody else.

When he adopts another person’s being, he likely inherits their vocal properties to some degree, but I did wonder at first if the actor in him was just mimicking each voice. How do you see it?

You can read it both ways, perhaps. When he first becomes Eddie Marsan’s Frank, he gets the voice wrong before he gets it right. Clayface is a character whose superpower is mutability, the ability to shapeshift, and Matt, the person behind him, is already a brilliant actor with a brilliant mimetic quality. So what I thought was most interesting was that the superpower has a superpower. There’s potentially a collision between the two, which makes it interesting. Of course, we have quite a lot of fun with it and lean into the idea of an actor playing different characters.

Eddie Marsan told me his son asked who he’s playing in Clayface, and Eddie was like, “I’m Clayface.”

Hey, he wasn’t lying.

(Laughs.) Exactly.

What did you learn and apply from test screenings?

Jon Harris, my longtime editor, and I like to test informally before we test formally. We show the film to a lot of people and try to understand what we sometimes can’t see ourselves. First, there’s pace, then clarity, then point of view and character identification.

You always learn something. Often, you learn what’s extraneous. If you’re hanging on to something, you’ll realize during a test screening that you don’t even need to wait for the cards to come back at the end. You’re already like, “Yeah, we don’t need that.”

Someone said to me once that test screenings are a necessary pain for directors, but I don’t think so. It’s a really, really useful tool; it just needs to be used well. You get a fantastic amount of data, feedback and information — and then it’s about making sure the solutions are right.

It’s the same with notes. Often, you’ll get a note on a script or a cut, and you’re like, What’s the note behind the note? Sometimes, you get notes with prescriptions. People will say, “Oh, why don’t you try that?” And you’re like, “Well …” But they’re scratching away at something. If ten people tell you you’re drunk, lie down.

Clayface has a couple Batman-related Easter Eggs. Matt’s penthouse coffee table is Joker’s coffee table from Tim Burton’s Batman (1989). The chair in which he receives his plastic surgery consultation is the same barber-style chair on which Jack Napier received his botched surgery in Burton’s pic. But did you ever pitch a “Where’s Waldo”-style shot where you insert a tiny silhouette of Batman on a rooftop in a wide shot?

Now I’m slightly annoyed that I didn’t do that. I probably could have done it in the deep background of a massive wide shot. No one would probably ever know. But anything bigger than that, I just felt that this is Matt Hagen’s story. The idea of trying to crowbar in another character would feel too cute or too tricksy and somehow inauthentic.

Did everybody make a fuss about The Batman (1989) props?

Yeah, there was a lot of geeking out on set. Everybody was going, “Oh, wow, look at this.” There’s quite a lot of Brian De Palma references as well. The scene in the nightclub, when Matt, as Cadillac Sal, is forced to sit at the table, that’s very much an homage to Carlito’s Way. Carlito is trying to walk through his club, but he gets dragged back to a table. And the costumes are similar, very knowingly.

You shot in Liverpool where Matt Reeves’ The Batman movies shoot. Did you have to avoid any locational overlap since Matt’s movies are not a part of the DCU?

I didn’t want to have the same buildings be the same buildings. It wasn’t so much about the DC universe; I just didn’t want to just copy somebody else. It feels lazy. There is so much great architecture in Liverpool. We had all the references, so we just made sure that if we were anywhere in the same vicinity that we put our own spin on it. James Price is an absolutely brilliant production designer. He’s really, really bloody good, so we had a good time.

When Matt disposes of Cadillac Sal, he says, “And hell’s coming with me.” Was that a tribute to Kurt Russell’s Wyatt Earp in Tombstone?

It’s a great movie line, but it wasn’t in my consciousness, initially. I’ve obviously seen Tombstone, but I didn’t remember that. There’s lots of other little movie references and nods in the movie. Corey’s death scene …

“You broke my heart.”

Yeah, that was very much stolen from The Godfather Part II. Some of the shots were also very much an homage to that moment and how Michael hugs Fredo. So there’s quite a few little moments that pay homage. You are what you eat, aren’t you?

Have you spitballed any sequel concepts yet?

Genuinely, no. I’ve been on a long, long road trying to make this film the best it can be. People ask, “What are you doing next?” And I’m slightly starting to worry because I have no idea. I’ve been that immersed in Clayface.

What day best sums up that long, long road?

There are so many. We were doing a lot of icky stuff, and when Matt overdoses and spits out these horrible things in front of Naomi’s character [Caitlyn], I’ll always remember Naomi’s laugh. It was just too much to take for her.

I would also say the airplane sequence. We shot it with a gimbal in the airplane toilet, and Tom was in full prosthetics. He was getting chucked about the lavatory as he was digging the scissors into his eyes. People generally don’t talk on film sets for obvious reasons, but on a set with a hundred people, I heard 50 people at various monitors go, “Oh my God!” So I do remember thinking at that moment, Yeah, this scene’s got a chance.

I still have some amount of sympathy for Matt, but his decision to murder Max Minghella’s cop character, John, is an awfully bitter pill to swallow. As I was watching, I kept thinking, Oh, John is not going to be able to collar Matt without implicating Caitlyn. Thus, he’s going to become the type of cop that he’s condemned throughout the movie, one who looks the other way. So it’s a shocking move because Matt probably didn’t have to go that far due to John’s Catch-22.

That’s good in terms of misdirection. But you’re approaching it from John’s point of view. Matt’s point of view probably wouldn’t see it that way.

Yeah, Matt is probably not thinking about John’s legal dilemma. He just wants to be the object of Caitlyn’s affection in any way can, even if it means shapeshifting into her fiancé (John).

It’s all quite interesting, and I think a lot of people share your feelings. There’s been audible gasps in the cinema when John’s death is revealed. Max brilliantly plays the character. He could have so easily been the third wheel and a bit of a sap, but he brings such humanity, warmth and humor to him.

Looking at it in terms of Matt’s character motivations, he’s in the crosshairs. He’s under suspicion. But the nanos are taking over him, and these primal impulses are bubbling up within him. So, from a normal point of view, you might go, No, no, no. But from his point of view, it’s explicable. It doesn’t mean we have to like it, but he’s acting out of some combination of self-defense, love and a weird obsession. He’s just gone at that point.

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Clayface is now playing in movie theaters.