The Suicide Squad: Another Song Almost Played in Key Harley Quinn Scene

The Suicide Squad has been in theaters and on HBO Max for nearly a month now, and fans are still [...]

By Jenna Anderson

The Suicide Squad has been in theaters and on HBO Max for nearly a month now, and fans are still relishing in its irreverent take on the DC Comics mythos. One of the standout elements of the film is Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) who reprises her role from 2016's Suicide Squad and 2020's Birds of Prey with epic fanfare. This includes a solo fight sequence that occurs midway through the film, which sees Harley getting the upper hand on her captors in the Corto Maltese government. The scene unfolds to Louis Prima's "Just A Gigalo/I Ain't Got Nobody" — but according to writer-director James Gunn, it was almost set to a completely different song. During a recent virtual watch party for The Suicide Squad, Gunn tweeted that he considered using Queen's "Death on Two Legs" for the sequence, but settled on the final song as soon as he'd thought of it.

Gunn has previously spoken candidly about the experience of filming Harley's escape scene, calling it his "favorite four minutes of film" he's ever shot.

"She can do anything," Gunn explained to the Associated Press earlier this year. "Or I thought she could do anything. And then one day she had to sing and I said, 'OK, well you can do everything but one thing.' But she's such a great actress. She embodies the character. She's able to do the comedy. She's able to do the drama. And physically, she is a pure athlete and is able to do these stunts in such a graceful, magnificent, beautiful way. And so I wrote the biggest action scene I've ever done all around (Robbie's character) Harley, and it was so fun to create just on every level from working with the stunt guys all the way through to working with her. It's probably my favorite four minutes of film I've ever shot before."

"You get to see another side of Harley [in The Suicide Squad]," Robbie explained to ComicBook.com in 2020. "It's interesting. You keep getting to meet her at different points in her life, as if a couple of years have gone by. Of course, the films aren't directly connected, but as an actor, I can map it out in a chronological sense. So, it's fun to see 'Okay, what was she like a couple of years ago when she was with Mister J?' 'What is she like now, after they've broken up? And what is she going to be like in another couple of years' time?' I love seeing her at these different stages of her life."

The Suicide Squad is now available in theaters, as well as to stream on HBO Max.

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