As Gotham gears up for its premiere tonight on FOX, showrunner Bruno Heller has been speaking to Digital Spy about the Batman prequel series, and specifically the introduction of The Dark Knight’s most iconic foe, The Joker.

“There are certain villains that can and do precede Batman,” states Heller. “There are others that don’t, and we’ll play with that. Generally speaking, we won’t go to the full theatrical, spandex costume aspect of the villains – the fully-fledged villains – because it’s almost not consistent with this world. The Joker didn’t think of his shtick all by himself. There must have been someone before who The Joker saw and thought, ‘Oh, that’s a good shtick. I could work with that and make it better.’ It’s the same with Batman. There must have been other vigilantes before him who didn’t pull off such a good act. We’ll play around with those ideas in Gotham.”

“We’re going to wait and get the show up and running [before we meet the real Joker],” he continues. “We want to get the story right and we want to be tonally right – and then we’ll start thinking about how to bring him in. We will certainly try to surprise people, and maybe even trick people. It’s one of those expectations that everyone will be waiting for, so you can’t just present the guy with a big smile and start telling the story. Not that that would be dull, but that’s one of those opportunities to really start playing with this.”

Be sure to head on over to Digital Spy for the full interview, during which Heller talks about the origin of the show, the involvement of young Bruce Wayne, and the chances of Gotham crossing over with other DC television shows.