Clint Eastwood Advised His Son, Scott Eastwood to Decline The Suicide Squad Sequel

Scott Eastwood’s Suicide Squad character, Lieutenant GQ Edwards, could have been in The Suicide Squad, if not for some advice from Eastwood’s father, he said in a new interview. When Warner Bros. invited Eastwood, whose father is Hollywood legend Clint Eastwood, to join the cast of James Gunn’s sequel to David Ayer’s 2016 supervillain team-up, he wasn’t sure what to do. So he called his dad, got a little clarity, and ultimately bowed out. And let’s be honest: that decision almost certainly saved Lt. Edwards’s life, considering what happened to most of the returning characters in The Suicide Squad.

But it wasn’t life and death that helped him decide to pass on the movie. Instead, Eastwood was frustrated that Warners wanted him to sign a three-picture deal with no guarantee as to what those movies would entail. 

“They didn’t want to pay me any money for those next movies and they didn’t have another script for the other movie, so I didn’t know what I was going to be signing myself up for,” Eastwood told Insider, adding that his father advised him “If it feels like they really need you and if it’s a good part, then do it. If not, then don’t.”

“I didn’t have the answer to those questions at that time,” Eastwood said. “I wasn’t going to have the answers, and they were pressuring me. So ultimately it didn’t happen.”

That bit about “…if it’s a good part” may have been a dealbreaker, considering that characters like Captain Boomerang and Rick Flag didn’t make it out of the movie alive. It’s plausible, if not likely, that Eastwood’s character would have been killed off at some point, which would only have added insult to injury, given that his role was reportedly cut to the bone in Suicide Squad after studio interference started to reshape the film.

“I have talked to David [Ayer], and I know my character got a lot more love in the Ayer cut,” Eastwood said.

On the other hand, The Suicide Squad did manage to give a bigger life to some of the behind-the-scenes characters from Amanda Waller’s division with Peacemaker, so if Eastwood’s character were to be stuck behind a desk, he could have had quite a bit of fun with it.

You can see Suicide Squad and The Suicide Squad on HBO Max.