David Ayer Brought The Madness to ‘Suicide Squad’

Since the cast was announced for the upcoming DC title Suicide Squad the fans have been anxious to get their hands on any information available. During production that resulted in an endless stream of leaked set photos and the insane stories of Jared Leto’s decent into method acting madness. With a cast the size of this one and the caliber of bad guys we are seeing on screen there was bound to be excitment. What we didn’t know while we were seeing the leaked pictures of Harley’s outfit and Batman riding on top of the car during production was the unusually process this cast went through together before production started.

When most movies are in pre-production they have a rehearsal period, these are often just big table reads, with a movie like this it would make sense you would want to read through everything a couple times. To see how the different characters interacted in person rather than just on the page.  UK Yahoo Movies was on the set talking to Ayer himself along with the available members of the squad, when I say available I mean some of these guys in addition to Leto were too deep in their villainous mindsets to talk to any reporters while in character. One such cast member was Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje who plays Killer Croc, the people at UK Movies were told once he is in his prosthetic he is Croc and it was best to try not to talk to him, don’t want to get eaten or anything!

David Ayer decided the traditional pre production for the cast was not a good fit for this particular project, for these actors to go to where they needed to for each of their characters they needed to shed any embarrassment they might have. He had the cast excluding Leto sit down talk through the script and improvise as their characters. He also asked them deeply personal and sometimes uncomfortable questions like, what are you most afraid of? What is the most embarrassed you’ve ever been? What’s the meanest thing you’ve ever done to someone? Joel Kinnaman who plays Rick Flag said, ““He asked questions in front of everyone that were hard to dodge.  So it becomes very honest, it strips the facade and you get to know each other for real.” Jay Hernadez who plays El Diablo added the Ayer himself answered all the same questions which made them all a little more at ease with the director.

In addition to personal detail Ayer had the cast share he also had them fight each other. Ayer himself talked a little more about the rehearsal process,  “It wasn’t a normal rehearsal, we’d talk about their lives, their history, and really got them to open up as people to each other. I also had them fight. I had them fight each other. You learn a lot about who a person really is when you punch them in the face. It gets rid of a lot of the actor stuff.” After reading that interview it is entirely possible Leto wasn’t the craziest on the set, but maybe to run a mad house you must be a little mad yourself!