Suicide Squad Press Conference

Movies, News, Suicide Squad
Shares

Director David Ayer and the cast of Suicide Squad, dropped into New York to head off a press conference before the new DC Extended Universe film premiered and ComicBook.com  was on hand to give a play on the interviews conducted.

DC All Access’s Tiffany Smith handled the interviews for the ensemble:

JARED LETO ON GETTING THE ROLE OF THE JOKER

“It’s kinda like giving birth out of your prickhole,” Leto joked. “For me it was the role of a lifetime. I had so much fun playing the Joker, I think I could play the Joker a few more times, then retire.

“David was really great because from the beginning it was clear he wanted to do something different, something special, and make something we’d all be really proud of,” Leto said. “I could tell he was willing to go to all lengths to get that. That was both scary and also exciting. I was surprised by the freedom he gave everybody to go completely fucking crazy. What I thought was genius about David was that he was always looking for the accident, for the mistake, and embracing that. For Margot and I, there was a lot of humor in a really sick and twisted way, but he was amazing at finding that. Thank you, David.”

WILL SMITH, JOEL KINNAMEN & ADAM BEACH ON DAVID AYER’S APPROACH

“It was almost more like therapy than character creation,” Will said of Ayer’s approach to developing their roles. “And then he’d completely betrays us, betray our trust,” Joel Kinneman added.

“David would train with us, beat us up,” Adam Beach said. “There was one time he was sparring with Karen Fukuhara and she got a fist right in the nose.” “She had her guard open,” Ayer said to laughs.

“Pretty much every day that Viola and I had together on set, David would call on her to stand behind the camera and yell mean things at me,” Joel said. “She’s stand there going Joel! Flag! You little bitch! You punk-ass bitch!”

WILL SMITH, JOEL KINNAMEN & MARGOT ROBBIE DISCUSS SET INJURIES:

“When you’re 47, no injuries are mild,” Will said. “I tore my calf a couple weeks in. And what’s funny is you do it doing nothing. I threw a punch and took a step back, and my calf popped. The doctor said I was gonna be out six weeks. It was really scary to be in that position, I was like, oh my God, Suicide Squad, this opportunity…” Will “soldiered on” Ayer said, and then the same day Kinneman had almost the exact same injury!

Margot Robbie thought she had broken a rib at one point, but it was just a bad bruise. “The hardest part wasn’t the physical side, actually. The emotional stuff was definitely more difficult. Exposing my most vulnerable sides in front of a room full of strangers at that point was incredibly hard. Trying to figure out why Harley was so devoted to Joker, that was hard. The physical stuff was fun.”

Beach praised the physicality of both Delevigne and Fukuhara on the set. “I didn’t really have to do any fighting until the reshoots,” Delevigne said. “But I had a lot of fun learning the martial arts.”

HOW DAVID AYER BOUGHT HUMOR & HUMANITY TO THE FILM’S CHARACTERS

“These are villains with souls, and that’s indicative of his vision,” said Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. “There’s a moment when Croc says, ‘I’m beautiful,’ to have that kind of crocodilian black man make that statement was amazing.”

HOW MEMBERS OF THE CAST WENT ABOUT RESEARCHING THEIR CHARACTERS PERSONALITIES

Robbie did a lot of research, but to fill in the gaps in the backstory she “watched a couple of TED talks on schizophrenia. That really helped, because the women doing the talks were so intelligent, and Harley needed to be intelligent but also psychotic. I also got recommended to read a play called ‘Fool for Love’ that really helped me unlock her feelings for the Joker.”

Viola Davis got a book from Joel called “Confessions of a Sociopath.” “One of the things I found out is that a lot of CEOs of companies are sociopaths. I also had to tap into Viola at 8, I couldn’t think as Viola at 51. But Viola at 8 could beat some peoples’ ass. I remember telling David that when I sat down with him the first time. I am shy, always apologizing, retreating. But Amanda Waller is unapologetically brutal. I could not retreat with this group.”

Fukuhara said that growing up in a Japanese-American first generation household, she grew up on Japanese culture. “When I first read the Katana comics, I immediately fell in love, and felt like a part of her lived inside me. When I put on the mask and the costume, that turned me into the character.”

Cara Delevigne did a lot of research on addiction. “Never having enough, always needing more of something. I also tried to find the demon inside myself, and try to make that as real as possible. Just trying to make it real. That’s what David wanted for this movie.”

DAVID AYER ON DIVERSITY

“For me, I grew up in South LA, I grew up in a diverse neighborhood where I was the only white boy,” Ayer said. “It’s the world I grew up in, but it’s also the world we all live in. For kids, it’s important to see faces like theirs on screen. It’s also a global business now. It comes naturally to me, and to me, diversity is strength. We really need to work on that on screen and in the world in general.”

Producer Richard Suckle said this movie was a “producer’s dream” and he “couldn’t ask for a better job,” eliciting “awwws” from the cast. Producer Chuck Roven agreed, praising Ayer’s script and the actors’ performances. “It was a producer’s dream – except for when it was trying to get them to be serious sometimes,” he said to laughs.

“The trick is to never show fear,” Ayer said. “They are many, I am one. The other thing is to always have an answer, even if you’re just making it up.” Will Smith called him out on those sometimes, though.

Read the full conference at ComicBook.com.

Also photos and videos of the cast during the press conference and junkets have surfaced.

https://twitter.com/SSquadUpdates/status/759811675507662848

https://twitter.com/SSquadUpdates/status/759811373253570560

Eric Curto
Latest posts by Eric Curto (see all)
Adewale Akinnoye-Agbbaje on Live With Kelly
Chris Pine to Appear on Jimmy Kimmel Live on August 1st