Former President Donald Trump was widely mocked after a resurfaced interview showed Academy Award-winning actor Christian Bale claiming Trump addressed him as "Bruce Wayne" while filming The Dark Knight Rises at Trump Tower.
Bale, who has had a successful Hollywood career since childhood, is best known for playing Bruce Wayne and his alter ego Batman in director Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, which started with Batman Begins (2005), followed by The Dark Knight (2008) and the aforementioned The Dark Knight Rises (2012).
The three films are set in the fictional Gotham City, for which New York City served as a stand-in on multiple occasions. In 2011, the cast and crew of The Dark Knight Rises filmed scenes in New York City and used the lobby of Trump Tower as the backdrop for the main entrance to Wayne Enterprises’ headquarters.
Trump invited Bale to his office at one point, an experience that prompted Bale to share the following in a 2018 interview with Variety:
“I met him, one time. We were filming on ‘Batman’ in Trump Tower and he said, ‘Come on up to the office.'”
“I think he thought I was Bruce Wayne because I was dressed as Bruce Wayne. So he talked to me like I was Bruce Wayne and I just went along with it, really."
"It was quite entertaining. I had no idea at the time that he would think about running for president.”
The interview resurfaced after a Nolan fan account on X, formerly Twitter, shared Bale's quote, bringing new attention to his encounter with the former president.
The post also includes a photo of Trump and Bale at Trump Tower.
@NolanAnalyst/X
The mockery was swift.
As funny as Bale's story is, it's perhaps no surprise Trump was confused given his often erratic and freewheeling speech and thought patterns.
At the very least, we hope he liked the movie.
@jaketapoer/Bluesky
@BillAckman/Twitter