Jai Courtney Signed On for Suicide Squad Before Reading a Script Because of David Ayer

Jai Courtney gets to have a lot of fun in Suicide Squad as Captain Boomerang. The Aussie actor clearly enjoyed his time on set with the cast, and in a sit-down interview with Comicbook.com in New York, he told us that getting to be the "class clown" on screen was a real thrill.

What may surprise some, however, is that Courtney took on the job before there was even a script written, and that's simply because of the chance to work with this particular director.

"It was weird because a lot of us signed on before there was even a script. I didn't read a script until awhile after it was a done deal," Courtney said. What made him sign on? "David Ayer," he said in a heartbeat. "Yeah, that was it. That was everything. In fact, at that point, the character he sold me on was one thing, but it wasn't about - we had our first conversation about it and when he said Captain Boomerang, I was like... 'Well... I've got this potential here to really look like a dickhead,'" he said with a laugh. His first impression of Boomerang, of course, was from the original flashy and campy take on the character.

"But then there's David Ayer's interpretation," Courtney went on. "Just please, let's hope he hasn't lost his marbles and he's not writing that guy in, precisely!" The actor kept the faith, though, and felt like it paid off.

"No one was saying it's a big, funny, exciting, colorful - that's not a language Ayer speaks, and I don't think that's how he sees the film now," the actor explained. "He wants things to be grounded in reality and authentic and cool. It's a dark landscape there, man, and he handles his characters really, really well. We knew that he was going to write part for these actors that they were gonna have a lot of fun playing with. All the other shit kind of came as we went. You can't see that world in the script; you can, but we don't see this finished product off the page. You get a sense of it, but I think it's exceeded everyone's expectations."

Suicide Squad is in theaters August 5, 2016.