In DC’s new Batman: Unburied podcast that debuted earlier this month, Black Panther star Winston Duke portrays a newly-reimagined Batman. And now, he’s opening up about the experience.
According to Variety, the original podcast drama sees Bruce Wayne as a Black man with “mild privilege instead of extreme privilege,” according to Duke, and the process of participating in it served as a “liberating” experience for him.
“It wasn’t focused on my body and what I looked like in a frame…Being a Black man shaped who this man was. But my body doesn’t have to be the focus,” the Nine Days star explained, later adding the questions the podcast attempts to answer: “How would I, as a powerful person of color with billions of dollars, change the world… and a justice system that feels like I couldn’t come out on the right end?”
Duke went on to share how during this podcast, which he recorded in-between filming scenes for the upcoming Black Panther sequel, he was able to find “really direct, cool allegories of Bruce Wayne as a person of color” and that he was able to portray the iconic character in a more relatable way. He also noted that fan reception had been overwhelmingly positive, noting that some listeners expressed how “relieving and comforting” his voice was and that they “loved that Bruce Wayne has a hint of a Caribbean dialect!’”
Batman: Unburied was created and executive produced by David S. Goyer and is available to listen to exclusively on Spotify. It landed in the number one spot on the music streaming platform’s worldwide charts shortly after it came out and continues to stay near the top of the list.