Director Stephen Gaghan remembers the phone call he received after Ledger’s death.
16 years after the death of Heath Ledger New details have emerged about the death of “The Dark Knight” star. Director Stephen Gaghan has recounted a phone call he received after the terrible news. At the time of his death, the filmmaker was working with the 28-year-old on an adaptation of Malcolm Gladwell’s guide “Blink: The Power of the Moment,” about the perfect translation of spontaneous thoughts.
In Gladwell’s revisionist history podcast series “Development Hell,” Stephen Gaghan recalls the call he received from Ledger’s father when he arrived at where Ledger was found. “You were with the body. Our script was there in bed with him, and your book was on the nightstand,” he told Gladwell. His phone number was probably on the cover of the script. Gaghan thinks back to the phone call: “It pulled the rug out from under me. I literally sat down because I was like, ‘What?’ The emotions, what they were going through, I shouldn’t have experienced in any way, but as a human being or as someone who just cares, I was just there and listening and my wife was looking at me. I remember her face and I was just speechless. I just listened and listened and listened. It was just very, very sad. And it’s still sad.”
Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast series looks at projects that were never realized – including the film adaptation of “Blink”. The film, which starred Leonardo DiCaprio, was originally commissioned by a studio in 2005. However, it never came about. After Gaghan further developed the script and DiCaprio’s character, he realized that he had written the role for Heath Ledger in his mind, which is why he abandoned the project after the actor’s death.
He explained: “I just had a real connection with him that was kind of unusual and really special to me. I was really excited and started seeing him as the lead. Once I saw it, I couldn’t take it back.”