The tales of Jared Leto going a little too far to get into character as the Joker on David Ayer’s Suicide Squad have stuck in the memory for a whole lot longer than anything the actor actually did in the movie itself, even if he’s tried to debunk several of those tales in the years since.
Will Smith revealed that Leto’s commitment was so intense that he was never introduced to the man behind the Clown Prince of Crime until the premiere, and there’s been additional tales of the Academy Award winner gifting his co-stars with such wonderful gifts as used condoms, anal beads, dead hogs and porno mags, which sounds delightful.
Leto denied that he’d bestowed Margot Robbie with a dead rat in a box, insisting that he’d actually given her vegan cinnamon buns instead, but Viola Davis isn’t having any of it. In a new interview, the DCEU’s Amanda Waller confirmed that a rodent did indeed exchange hands, but it sounds as though it was very much alive and well.
“I was saying loudly, ‘Don’t open the box!’. I was halfway out the door when she opened the box and saw the biggest black rat you could imagine. Then she cooed at it. No fear. Open. Receptive. Full of joy.”
You have to admire Leto’s dedication to the Joker, even if it was mostly for nothing in the long run. Not only were the majority of his scenes left on the cutting room floor as Warner Bros. hacked Suicide Squad apart in post-production, but his entire DCEU career was cut short after Gotham City Sirens and his planned spinoff alongside Robbie’s Harley Quinn were canceled.
He did make a brief, much improved and significantly better return to the fold in the epilogue of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, though, but as of yet there’s no word on whether or not it marked his final time under the makeup.
