Christopher Nolan says he never offered Josh Hartnett the role of Batman before Christian Bale — despite Hartnett claiming he turned it down

• Christopher Nolan said he never offered Josh Hartnett the role of Batman in his trilogy.
• Speaking on the "Happy Sad Confused" podcast, Nolan said it "never got that far."

Christopher Nolan has said that Josh Hartnett was never offered the role of Batman in his "Dark Knight" trilogy.

Speaking to Josh Horowitz on the latest episode of the podcast "Happy Sad Confused," the filmmaker said he only had "an initial conversation" with Hartnett about taking on the role of Gotham's masked vigilante in the early 2000s, before casting Christian Bale in "Batman Begins."

Hartnett has previously expressed his regret over turning down the role, telling Playboy in 2015 that he learned a hard lesson about saying "no to some of the wrong people" when he declined Nolan's offer to star in the blockbuster.

"People don't like being told no. I don't like it. I learned my lesson when Christopher Nolan and I talked about Batman. I decided it wasn't for me," Hartnett said at the time.

However, according to Nolan, that's not how it went down.

Asked by podcast host Horowitz whether he had screen-tested Hartnett or offered him the role, the Oscar-nominated director said: "No, it never got that far."

"I met with Josh and if I recall, he was a young actor whose work I was very interested in," he said.

"I had an initial conversation with him but he had read my brother's script for 'The Prestige' at the time and was more interested in getting involved with that," he continued. "So it never went further than that."

Nolan and Hartnett both seem to agree that Hartnett's interest in being cast in "The Prestige" did play a role in why things went awry.

In another 2015 interview with HuffPost, Hartnett admitted that he actually only met with Nolan to discuss a role in the 2006 sci-fi flick, which was the director's next film after "Batman Begins."

"I really wanted to convince him that when he did the 'The Prestige,' maybe hire me," said Hartnett.

"And then, of course, as time went on, he ended up hiring the guy who he hired to play Batman to play in 'The Prestige,'" he continued, referring to Bale.

Hartnett told Playboy that "they also hired my girlfriend at the time," referring to Scarlett Johansson, who appears alongside Bale and Hugh Jackman in the movie.

He continued: "That's when I realized relationships were formed in the fire of that first Batman film, and I should have been part of the relationship with this guy Nolan, who I felt was incredibly cool and very talented."

"I was so focused on not being pigeonholed and so scared of being considered only one thing as an actor," he explained.

In his "Happy Sad Confused" interview, Nolan went on to express his admiration for Hartnett, revealing that it was his previous meeting with Hartnett over 15 years ago that prompted him to cast him in his latest movie, "Oppenheimer."

"I think over the last few years he's done some really interesting things and really looked to stretch himself," said the director.

"So I was really pretty excited to get him to come and play Ernest Lawrence," he said of Hartnett's role in the biopic about the father of the atomic bomb.

"I think he does a really great job in the film," Nolan added.

"Oppenheimer" opens in theaters Friday.