HOLLYWOOD – As Warner Brothers releases its latest DC Comics blockbuster, Suicide Squad, sources have confirmed that star Jared Leto’s “acting method” involved torturing his castmates with songs from his music side project Thirty Seconds to Mars.
“He kept saying it was his ‘process as an artist” to get in character as the Joker,” recounted co-star Margot Robbie, who plays the villainous Harley Quinn. “I felt like I couldn’t say no – he’s this big star who just won an Oscar – but when he started into his fourth rendition of ‘Closer to the Edge’, I couldn’t help but feel violated.”
Robbie then added, “I definitely should have held out for one of those Marvel movies.”
Witnesses report that Leto, in order to prepare to portray the villainous Clown Prince of Crime, would force his castmates to listen to impromptu live renditions of various Thirty Seconds to Mars songs. This was in addition to ambushing them with audio recordings of the band’s mid-range emo-rock back catalogue.
“I mean, it was bad enough when the guy kept mailing me dead rats and anal beads,” explained Leto’s Suicide Squad co-star Will Smith. “But then one day I get to my dressing room and he’s erased all the music on my iPhone and replaced it with the 2013 album ‘Love, Lust, Faith and Dreams’. That’s when he really crossed a line.”
A visibly shaken Smith stared at his phone, adding, “I mean, how the hell is making me listen to some song called ‘Pyres Of Varanasi’ supposed to help him act better as a scary clown? Just do your job, guy.”
While most of Leto’s co-stars expressed a wish to put his on-set harassment behind them, award-winning actress Viola Davis, who plays government taskmaster Amanda Waller, was less understanding. “I can’t believe some unprofessional pasty-faced narcissist gets to terrorize all his co-stars, and everyone goes, ‘how daring, what a genius!’”
Davis continued, “Imagine the headlines if I sent my co-star a dead pig’s head, or woke them up in their trailer accompanied by Shannon Leto (drums) and Tomo Miličević (lead guitar) and started playing deep cuts off of (the 2004 album) ‘A Beautiful Lie’? I’d never work in this town again.”
Reached for comment, Leto sent a bag of old teeth along with a note reading, “Teehee, the Joker wants to you to SMILE more and also to keep an eye out for Thirty Seconds To Mars’ 5th studio album, dropping in 2017!”
