The Suicide Squad Director James Gunn Celebrates World Rat Day

Say cheese! James Gunn wishes Daniela Melchior a happy World Rat Day with a throwback photo from the set of The Suicide Squad. Melchior played street rat Cleo Cazo, a.k.a. Ratcatcher 2, a thief with the ability to control rats. Inheriting the mantle of her father (Taika Waititi), Cleo and her pet rat Sebastian (played by bro-dents Jaws and Crisp Ratt) are recruited to the new Task Force X and deployed to Corto Maltese. Sent to the island nation with Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Bloodsport (Idris Elba), and Peacemaker (John Cena), it’s Cleo’s furry friends who squeak out a victory when she summons an army of rats to attack the giant alien starfish Starro.

“Happy #WorldRatDay,” Gunn tweeted at Melchior with a photo of the actress and her rat co-star. Melchior auditioned with live rats and bonded with the animal actors who played Sebastian (including Crisp Ratt, named after Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy star Chris Pratt). 

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“They brought this really big plastic box with the rats already opened and they didn’t tell me anything,” Melchior previously recalled to ComicBook about her Suicide Squad audition. “They wanted to see what I was going to do. So, I was like, ‘Oh my God. So sweet.’ And I wasn’t pretending, I swear. I picked one up, and then he was crawling on my shoulder. I picked another one.”

She continued, “Me and James, we looked like little kids playing with toys. We were so happy to have them. And I guess I passed the test.”

The Suicide Squad tamed a “couple dozen” real rats, according to Gunn, but Jaws and Crisp Ratt were the primary rat-tors playing Sebastian.

“They were our two main rats, and they were sweethearts, and they played Sebastian for most of the movie. Crisp could do some things and Jaws could do some other things,” Gunn told EW. “Jaws was the more mellow one. Whenever you needed a rat to just sit on Daniela’s shoulder, or to be held by her, or whatever, that’s almost always Jaws. And when you needed a more crazy rat that was drinking water or running across the room, that would be Crisp Ratt.”

The Suicide Squad is now streaming on HBO Max.