Peter Capaldi is best known for playing the Twelfth Doctor on Doctor Who, but these days fans know him as The Suicide Squad‘s The Thinker. Capaldi is one of many great actors to be featured in the film, and his co-star David Dastmalchian (Polka-Dot Man) recently took to Instagram to show off an awesome illustration Capaldi gave him as a wrap gift. Turns out, Dastmalchian isn’t the only person involved with The Suicide Squad lucky enough to get some original art from Capaldi. Director James Gunn recently shared a drawing Capaldi made on a script page and it’s pretty darn epic.
“#PeterCapaldi drew on a script page for my wrap gift on #TheSuicideSquad (slight spoilers if you read closely),” Gunn wrote. You can check out the image in the post below:
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Recently, Capaldi had a chat with ComicBook.com’s Brandon Davis and explained why he made the illustration for Dastmalchian.
“No, that was because David. I love David. I love his performance in this movie. Polka Dot Man is my favorite character because he’s this lame superhero and David is such a brilliant actor and he plays it with this kind of sad face, which I love this really lame superhero. So we became great friends, but he has this comic, Count Crowley, which he’s created himself and he writes. And it was just coming out as we were doing the movie and it was so great because he was actually … He kind of sells it and if you go past his trailer, he’s got Count Crowley posters. Basically, if you went to his trailer, I think he’d have a stack of comics and he would sell you them if you want,” Capaldi shared.
During the chat, the actor also revealed he didn’t know much about The Thinker before getting the script from Gunn.
“My introduction was the script. I just read the script. James asked me to do it and then sent me the script, and I thought the script was great. And that’s really where I took it from. I dug into some of the comics, which is an archeological dig to have a look at his various in comics. It was quite difficult to pin down exactly who he was because he changes so much. And also, he seems to be quite old and then he disappears, and then he comes back again. And I thought it was quite confusing. I thought I’d be better just to cleave to the script. Stick with the script and try and conjure up that Thinker, as opposed to making a connection with the comics,” Capaldi shared.
“The first thing when you go on the Internet and call him up, you get a little drawing of him in the orange jumpsuit, which kind of is iconic for him and did, I think, influence James and our Thinker. But yeah, no, I just tried to do what the script tells me to do. It’s quite tricky. I mean, James is brilliant, I think, but it’s a very heightened sort of world that you have to try and exist in and be funny and scary at the same time,” he added.
The Suicide Squad is now playing in theaters and is streaming on HBO Max until September 5th.