While Suicide Squad has usually focused on the less popular villains in the DC canon—their exclusion from the supervillain clique only contributing to suicidal feelings no amount of superguidancecounselor “rap seshes” can ameliorate—Warner Bros. seems to be taking a slightly different tack. On the heels of reports that Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor and Jared Leto as the Joker are being courted for the David Ayer-directed adaptation, Collider now swears that its sources say Margot Robbie is being sought to play Harley Quinn, henchwoman to the Joker and inspiration to countless girls at Hot Topic.
That Warner Bros. would want to use the 2016 film as a means of shoring up its supervillain roster with such big names is no surprise. (Though it is potentially bad news for the already rock-bottom self esteem of Captain Boomerang.) In Harley Quinn’s case, at least, she’s already been a part of the New 52 iteration of Suicide Squad, which—as we learned with Wonder Woman—is where DC’s new movies are drawing most of their inspiration. Though of course, her character history stretches back much further than that to when she was just Harleen Quinzel, doomed by her parents to be either associate to a psychotic clown or a Waffle House waitress, with her fate sealed by a stint as the Joker’s psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum.
A dangerous infatuation and equally unhealthy amounts of makeup followed, and Harley Quinn has since become a compelling character in her own right, her allegiances torn between the abusive svengali she affectionately calls Puddin’ and her friend—and possibly, lover—Poison Ivy. It remains to be seen how much of any of that will factor into Suicide Squad, a movie that is ostensibly about a group of villains conscripted into hopeless black ops missions by the government, and not the complexity of balancing personal relationships with evildoing.
As for Robbie, her name has long been rumored for Suicide Squad alongside Will Smith, Tom Hardy, Ryan Gosling, and every other actor who isn’t already locked into a new comic-book movie. She’s also been rumored for just about every major franchise film since her starring turn in The Wolf Of Wall Street—meaning there are at least two layers of salt to this report. Still, whether this report pans out or not, fans can at least agree that Robbie would make for a much better Harley Quinn than Will Smith would.