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Everything We Know About Jared Leto's Weird As Hell On Set 'Suicide Squad' Behavior

By Vivian Kane | Celebrity | October 7, 2015 |

By Vivian Kane | Celebrity | October 7, 2015 |


Ever since press started coming out about the upcoming Suicide Squad, we’ve probably heard more about the antics of Jared Leto than we have about the movie itself. Just this week, Will Smith told an interviewer at Beats 1 that he’s never “met” Jared Leto. He’s only ever talked to the Joker.

I’ve never actually met Jared Leto. We worked together for 6 months and we’ve never exchanged a word outside of ‘Action!’ and ‘Cut!’ I literally have not met him yet. So, the first time I see him will be ‘Hey, Jared. What’s up?’ He was all in on the Joker.
Given everything we’ve heard about Leto, this isn’t all that (if at all) surprising. In fact, a few months back, Margot Robbie basically said the same thing about what it’s like to shoot with Leto.
At first it was kind of confronting (to be up so close) but now I’m so used to it, I think if I ever saw him out of makeup now I would be really confused.

We’ve repeatedly told how “out there” he is, how method. Leto himself can’t resist telling us how super cool and scary and CRAZY he is, saying just a couple weeks ago,

I can’t wait for you to see this — they’re going to lock me away in a box after this movie comes out.

And sure, maybe he really is just that weird, but from the very start, this has also screamed “PR push.” Remember the very first cast photo, the one without Jared Leto, immediately letting us know he and his Joker were outsiders in this cast.

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Where was Leto?


Off prepping this Hot Topic realness, I suppose.
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This was around the time we started hearing about Leto’s craaaazy on-set (or off, more accurately, since he was separated from the cast for much of filming) antics. Like those horrific gifts he sent the cast and crew.

“He sent [Margot Robbie] a nice love letter with a black box with a rat in it—a live rat,” Adam Beach, who plays Slipnot in the Warner Bros. film, said. “It was beautiful. Then he sent bullets to Will [Smith] with a letter.”

The cast also received a video and—get ready for it!—a “dead hog.”

“Basically, what he said was, ‘Guys, I can’t be there but I want you to know I’m doing my work as hard as you guys,’” Beach said. “The video he showed is in character. It blew our minds away. Then we realized that day, this is real.”

THIS IS NOT ACTING, JARED LETO. THIS IS JUST WEIRD. Apparently the glitzy kraziness of this weird bastardization of Method acting rubbed off on Margot Robbie, Leto’s Harley Quinn.

Several crew members suggested killing it, but Robbie kept the rat because, “If Harley got something from Joker, she’d probably cherish it.”
Oh, vom. So, given Leto’s ostentatious weirdness from the start, no, no one is surprised to learn that he went full Daniel Day-Lewis and wouldn’t even talk to anyone on set. For what it’s worth, Leto has apparently done at least SOME work beyond alienating his coworkers and sending them animals at various states of life. Grant Morrison, Batman comics legend, says Leto approached him for advice. For his part, though, Morrison didn’t exactly sound confident in a potential end result.
It looks quite interesting. [Leto] called me to talk about his approach to the character and I steered him in a few directions. I’m keen to see if anything other than slicked back hair and the Marilyn Manson vibe made it into his performance.
It’s been a long, weird road of Suicide Squad’s PR team trying to convince us how crazy Jared Leto’s Joker is going to be. At this point, does anyone even believe them?