Margot Robbie Interview On Suicide Squad

Margot Robbie Talks Suicide Squad & Getting Into Harley Quinn's Head

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Early on in Suicide Squad, you’ll see Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, hanging upside down mid-splits, putting on a gymnastics performance in a Belle Reve cage. Like some inmates do in the gay and trans wing of L.A.’s Men Central Jail, Harley’s bed sheets have been retrofitted into something personal, giving her the look of a tattered angel touched by the devil.



She’s making a statement for the armed guards, who have to stand way back in the empty cell block that’s dedicated to Harley’s cage and the fencing that surrounds it. If this character warrants the most intense security, it’s because the psychiatrist-turned-villain is a threat to anyone within speaking distance. She uses words to get inside her victim’s head.



Harley isn’t just the Joker’s arm candy in Suicide Squad. She’s the Hannibal Lector of the DC universe.



Margot Robbie is really sweet though, or at least that what she wants us to think. The Australian actress who broke out with her audacious turn in The Wolf of Wall Street is explaining to a small group of journalists that she’s non-confrontational and always seeks to defuse a tense situation, which is exactly what Harley wouldn’t do.



That’s why director David Ayer needed Robbie to hone in on that aspect of the character, looking for vulnerabilities in people and then exercising a mean streak with words. During workshops and rehearsals, Ayer would have the cast tap into their personal lives and find intimate pain to build a foundation for their characters. An open wound was Robbie’s cue to jump in.



“She feeds off that,” says Robbie. “If Harley saw that they've shown a weak spot, she would (be) like a little scorpion tail, just ‘psst,’ get in there. And I felt so awful. So many times we did these scenes and I was just saying awful things.”

Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Entertainment, Clay Enos/TM & DC Comics



From what we’re hearing, audiences are bound to be ecstatic with those awful results. We’re at Pinewood Studios in Toronto, touring the Suicide Squad set mid-filming, and everyone from fellow cast mates to the costume designer are buzzing about Robbie’s performance. They say she’s got the best lines, the kick-ass moves and even a jaw-dropping dance routine.

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Robbie’s been training for the role for six months; enduring an intense workout regiment; training in gymnastics and gun-handling; reading as many comic books as she can get her hands on; and researching mental illnesses and MMPI tests, which she would later practice on her method actor co-star Jared Leto. She insists his Joker is up to some “next level” stuff.



“I'd watch a dialogue scene between (Harley and Joker) over, like, buildings blowing up and guns,” she says.



Today, Robbie’s got the day off, because an impending rainstorm has shut down an outdoor firefight they had planned to shoot on the back lot. So instead of the Harley Quinn costume that so many women will be rocking at Halloween parties, Robbie’s in black biker shorts and a black crochet sweater over a white T-shirt. She’s comfortable, which is something that she doesn’t really get to enjoy in costume, what with the towering heels Harley struts around in.



“Anytime anyone on set complains like, ‘This is really hard, I'm getting tired,’ I'm like ‘Everything you're doing, I'm doing in stilettos, ok.’”



According to Robbie, the original costume had her in a pair of flat Docs, but the camera testing made it apparent that the petite star, who spends much of the movie alongside Will Smith, needed more height.



“Once I knew that it had to be a pair of heels, I was like, “Right, well I want the most badass looking ones,’” she recalls. “And when I saw the Adidas ones I was like, ‘They are siiiick.’ Then I walked around in them for a day and I was like, ‘That was the Worst. Idea. Ever.’”



Our conversation is taking place just a couple weeks after Jurassic World was released, when critics were clawing away at that movie for a female heroine who never thinks to ditch the heels when being chased by dinosaurs. Harley’s heels certainly are of a piece in a costume that includes booty shorts and a ragged, form-fitting T-shirt that reads “Daddy’s Lil’ Monster.”



She’s sexed up, as most female characters in comic books are. In the same movie, we’ll see Cara Delevingne exposing a lot of tatted up skin as Enchantress.



“I don't think that it's a contradiction to say that a woman can be traditionally attractive and feminine and very strong, type-A and aggressive,” says director David Ayer in a separate interview later that evening.