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Suicide Squad Has an On-Set "Therapist" for Cast

Director David Ayer doesn't want actors to take their work home with them

By Marc Malkin Jun 29, 2015 12:00 PMTags
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Suicide Squad is going to be a dark movie.

So dark that director David Ayer has hired an on-set "therapist" of sorts to help his all-star cast avoid from going too far for their roles.

"David Ayer is about realism," Adam Beach, who plays Slipnot in the film, told me at the premiere of Joe Dirt 2: Beautiful Loser (streaming on Crackle July 16.) "So if your character is tormented, he wants you to torment yourself. He wants the real thing."

But he doesn't want his stars, which include Jared Leto as The Joker, Will Smith as Deadshot and Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, to take their work home.

"We kind of have like a therapist on board if you fall off the wagon and really are villainous," Beach said. "There's a friend of [Ayer's] that's very unique in making sure we have our ground."

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He's not a psychotherapist, but more of a "life coach," Beach explained. "Us actors explore very fine thin lines going to the dark side and he wants to make sure we finish a movie and don't disappear somewhere and then don't show up for work."

We certainly know Leto has gone method in some aspects. As I exclusively reported, the Oscar winner sent a live rat to Robbie, some bullets to Smith and a dead hog to the cast.

The surprising gifts included a video as well as a letter explaining why he hadn't joined his co-stars during preparations for the film.

"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."

Suicide Squad will be in theaters Aug. 5, 2016.

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