Jared Leto was so deep into his method acting for the Joker, it’s hard to believe that his whole schtick is just more publicity for Suicide Squad. While I’m hopeful that Leto’s experience with method attacking as the clown-faced deviant will go better for the actor in an off-screen sense, I’m not sure the on-screen experience can hold a flame to our boy, Heath Ledger. But he’s sure as hell trying. He may not be locking himself in hotel rooms and developing sleep disorders, but he is trying his damnedest to spook the s**t out of his costars. We’ve already been over the thing that Viola Davis told us about the dead hog delivered to set by Joker henchmen before the cast had even met him, a live rat gifted to Margot Robbie and an unnerving letter delivered to Will Smith with some shell casings, but all that pales in comparison to his later gifts.
Leto says of his intentions:
I did a lot of things to create a dynamic, to create an element of surprise, of spontaneity, and to really break down any kind of walls that may be there. The Joker is somebody who doesn’t really respect things like personal space or boundaries.
What’d he use to cross those boundaries? Apparently, he has the same sense of humor as my friends on my birthday every year because he gave them a bunch of used condoms and some anal beads (unknown usage history). So really, our 30 Seconds To Mars frontman wants to be a dick to cast members and use his character as an excuse. Will Smith, aka Deadshot, seems a little shaky on the semantics of where Leto ends and the Joker begins but hey…
Jared went full Joker. The rule, generally, is never go full Joker, but he really set the tone. He wasn’t playing with it, he was dead serious. As an actor, he was going in… he really jarred [us].
Robbie, aka Harley Quinn, seems a little bit more attuned to the humor of her on-screen beau:
I can’t even begin to tell you the things I got [from Jared]. By that point, I feel like I knew The Joker a bit, so it wasn’t as alarming, but yeah, there were many instances where I didn’t know what to expect from Jared.
This is the woman who kept the rat that was meant to spook her as a pet. It seems there are a lot of mixed feelings on set, you know with masked hero Ben Affleck in competition with Will Smith for some more Batman movies, some residual fear of Oscar-winner in Jared Leto, but perhaps the most understood are the sentiments from Killer Croc actor Adele Akinnuoye-Agbaje feeling left out. He simply resents the actor’s unsportsmanlike behavior.
If you’re going to have that kind of party, at least invite The Croc. Don’t send me your dirty leftovers, that just isn’t right… You see why he ain’t part of The Squad, right? That’s just downright selfish.
Whatever this movie turns out to be four months from now… it has to be wonderful. That or the publicists for Suicide Squad deserve to eat for free until the next best DC success.
He sounds obnoxious.