On imdb someone posted the original interview where Jack Nicholson said he'd warned Heath -- the pink one above is apparently a followup. In that clip, Nicholson was coming out of a restaurant or something onto the sidewalk, where he was bombarded with press people, cameras flashing like strobe lights, a mob of reporters demanding to know what he thought about Heath dying, and it was the first Nicholson had heard of it. So he had to come up with something on the spot, and his response was, "I warned him." No clarification.
Not the most touching elegy, it's true. And I'm not defending Nicholson's other stupid remarks about the Joker. But it was yet another reminder of how nightmarish it would be to be a big star. I don't think Nicholson even knew Heath particularly well -- either the press mob was just confronting every celebrity in sight, or they asked Jack because of the Joker thing. How many of us are eloquent under those conditions?