NEW YORK — There was no shortage of genuine camaraderie, good-natured teasing, and mutual respect during the New York press conference for Warner Bros.’ “Suicide Squad” this weekend. There was also plenty of laughter, interruptions, and outbursts, as the tight knit cast finished each other’s sentences and fought their way into each other’s stories.
No expense was spared either: WB threw the lavish event in a warehouse with a Harley Quinn-like cage in the center, Suicide Squad graffiti, pop art posters and costumed mannequins with the full, dressed-to-the-superhero-nines get ups. In attendance were the entire cast, director David Ayer and producers Charles Roven and Richard Suckle. And Mr. Charisma, Will Smith (Deadshot), set the tone by glad-handing presidentially, saying hello to nearly every member of the press.
Things kicked off with a bang. “It’s kind of like giving birth out of your prick hole,” Jared Leto said when asked about the difficult labor in creating his psychotic Joker character to much laughter and “Oh shit!” exclamations of surprise by Smith. “It was the role of a lifetime,” he added. “I had so much fun playing the Joker I could easily just play the [character] a couple of more times and then retire.”
Ayer is notorious for his rigorous preparation and team building exercises, and like they did on the WWII tank movie “Fury,” actors sparred and punched each other in the face. One would think this would make connection difficult, but Ayer said, “I wanted them to be best friends on camera. I wanted them to have that energy and the fastest way to get to there was to have them beat the hell out of each other, share their secrets, yeah.”
“That’s also the way you start cults,” Adam Beach (Slipknot) wisecracked, clearly the true class clown of the bunch.
“He was willing to go to all lengths to get that and that was a little scary, but also exiting,” Leto said about the filmmaker’s method. “And I was surprised how much freedom he gave us to go completely fucking crazy.”
Smith described the eccentric process Ayer employed to get actors into their character. “It’s called manipulation,” Leto interjected with a snicker. “Manipulation, yes!” Smith responded. “Domination, torture, you know. It was essentially more like therapy.” This was a nontraditional rehearsal to say the least.
Joel Kinnaman who plays Rick Flagg in the film, said part of the director’s manipulations was breaking the trust tree. “At the most opportune moments he would completely betray us and betray that trust,” Kinnaman said to howling laughter from Smith. “And he’d get a very unique reaction.”
Ayer defended his techniques. “It’s a process. It’s like a gymnasium for acting is the way I look at it,” he said of keeping the entire cast on its toes. No punches were pulled in sparring sessions and Karen Fukuhara (Katana) said Ayer accidentally clocked her in the face. “Her guard was down,” Ayer jested.
“That’s what he said to me after he punched me in the face!” Fukuhara exclaimed. “He was like, ‘you’ve got to block your face, Karen.’”
Ayer encouraged all the actors to get method and in each other’s faces and in particular, Viola Davis, who plays the most badass character in the film, Task Force X chief Amanda Waller, took that coaching to heart. “I could beat a lot of ass,” Davis said about her childhood, memories of which were explored in the “therapy” sessions. “I kicked a lot of ass when I was eight. People were always teasing me… there was a part of me that had to tap into that…[because] Amanda Waller is unapologetically brutal.”
So the actor, who describes herself as shy and inward in person, said she would taunt the cast while shooting. “I called him a pussy,” she said of Kinnaman, their characters working closely together throughout the film. Kinnaman then gave Davis a book called, “Confessions Of A Sociopath.” The Swedish actor said Davis would insult him even in the morning, saying, “You little punk ass bitch.”
Each member of the cast took their job deadly serious: Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje researched cannibalism and crocodiles for his turn as Killer Croc, Margot Robbie examined schizophrenia and felt as if she “exposed” herself during the psychoanalysis sessions as she prepared to play Harley Quinn, but it was Jai Courtney, playing the conniving, wild and mercurial Captain Boomerang who might have crossed all lines (Jared Leto pranks aside) when he chased director David Ayer around the set buck naked.
“He had a hard time keeping his clothes on!” Will Smith cackled. Evidently, Ayer busted into his trailer one day when Courtney was taking a shower and the actor decided it was on, threw his towel off, and ran like a madman after his director for the hell of it. “I saw this photograph of a naked man running after David Ayer who had a look of abject terror on his face. Maybe we can do an online poll or a charity event to release this photo,” Leto snickered.
Laughs and the cast ribbing each other was the order of the day, but the press conference ended on a serious note when Ayer was asked about his diverse multicultural cast that included a lot of women in lead roles like Margot Robbie, Cara Delevigne and Viola Davis.
“Look, I grew up in South L.A., I was the only ‘white boy’ in the neighborhood,” he explained. “It’s the world I know, but it’s also the world we all live in and I feel like kids need to see people who look like themselves onscreen.” The filmmaker explained his wife is Latina, and he has two daughters and he wanted to see that kind of representation in the film. “It’s important for [my daughters] to see faces like theirs on the screen…it comes naturally to me, but in diversity is strength.”
“Suicide Squad” opens August 5th.