Harley, to me should never change. She should never evolve. The way she starts out a movie
she should be like this, and then end kind of in the same place. I think that-- I love,
I kind of love characters like that, who you’re like “You’ve been through all of this, how have
you not learnt anything yet?” She’s like that. You went into DC World. Presumably when you do
that you go away… you don’t go away with you know shaking hands because
you’ve got you know a trauma, but you go away with bashes and bruises after
your experience as the wonderful Harley Quinn. Yeah. Harley’s just so much fun to play. But yeah,
she really takes it out of you. Uh, yeah. She’s also one of those characters that I find a little
more difficult to shake at the end of a job. Like, I feel like I’m-- a bit of her sticks around for a
couple of months. I’m like, “Ah! Stop it.” A shrill duck.
Yeah, yeah. I like I can hear myself say something like Harley, I’m like,
“Oh my god, I’m doing it. That’s weird.” How did you… how did you do that? How do
you… How much time did you spend on those stunts? How much training do you do?
Yeah… you start it in prep sort of thing so I’d say there’s a couple months of training. But
Ingrid and that team did the first Suicide Squad film. And their approach, you know,
Guy Norris, well-known Aussie stunt coordinator and his whole team of predominantly Aussies,
their approach is to get you to be able to do as many of their stunts as possible. So
they work with you. And they kind of design the stunt work so that it plays to your strengths so
that you can be able to do as much as possible. Which is wonderful because I love doing stunts.
Um… And so, yeah, yeah, you work at it a couple of months but because we’d already done a film
together they knew how much I could do, which was great. I don’t know why they didn’t let me
do the run up the wall thing maybe they were like, “Whatever, let’s just let Ingrid do it
to save time.” But I love that whole sequence it’s so fun. Some of it we spent like two months,
like in that sequence with all the kicks in the jail cell sort of area. Something like
the shooting, the first couple of guys we just did that on the day. And that, like,
doing all that stuff around the-- I learnt maybe the Saturday before we shot it, just for like,
three hours. So something like that, they’re like, “You’ve got it, we know you’ve got it.” And I was
like, “Wait, what are we—“ and they’re like, “I’m gonna count to 16, it’s gonna sound like this,
one, two, three-four-five, six, seven, eight-nine… And on everyone, that’s a shot and they’re gonna
be there, there and James wants you to look like the hands of a clock sort of thing,
was the idea behind it.” So things like that, we learnt-- they taught it to me very quickly and,
uh, and then other things, maybe you spend like a couple of months here and there. Like
you come in every couple of days. You just make it sound so easy.
It’s so fun, though. It’s sooo fun. I loved it. So when you did the first Suicide Squad,
did you know Harley? Were you familiar with the character?
No. Once I heard about the prospect of the film coming together and I started looking
into Harley Quinn as a character then I started reading the comics and totally fell in love with
them. But no, I hadn’t heard of her before. And then as you progressed through three movies,
like, what does that do the character? Like, are you aware of her moving and changing and are you
able to bring different things to each version? Definitely. But I was only bringing different
things based on what the director wanted because it was three different directors.
That character, actually Harley, to me should never change. She should never evolve. The way she
starts out a movie she should be like this, and then end kind of in the same place. I think that--
I love, I kind of love characters like that, who you’re like “You’ve been through all of this,
how have you not learnt anything yet?” She’s like that. But different directors
wanted different things and different directors responded to different aspects of the character.
And so I could play that up or play it down based on what they wanted and then so I got to explore
totally different kind of sides to it. And she was you know, I’d say like pretty similar, but based
on the director like I said, pretty different. And the middle film you produced as well?
Yeah, that’s right. What were you able to
bring into it that you know changed the positioning of the character?
Um, well, it got to be R-rated whereas the first Suicide Squad wasn’t R-rated and it was nice not
to kind of have shackles on Harley in that way. Because she’s never gonna censor herself so
censoring yourself as Harley for a PG-rating is a… is a… you know, just feels a little inauthentic.
And also I worked closely with the writer who’s a good friend of mine. And just kind
of finding the rhythm of her dialogue, and the things I loved about the comics. Just
bringing the things I loved in the comics to the forefront a little bit more, and just kind
of like having a bit of a girl gang in that movie was a fun aspect of the character.
When you’re doing read-throughs, table reads for that so forth for this kind of films, does it feel
like a ridiculous way to make a living? MR: Oh, so many times I feel like it’s a
ridiculous way to make a living. Like so many times it feels like… we’ll be on Babylon for
example and someone would be like, “Ok, like the elephant sh*t part…” and you’re just like,
“This is our job, this is so… we’re getting paid to do this, we’re being so stupid.”
Um. Yeah. It’s ridiculous and wonderful.