More often than not, an actor is handed a screenplay, and those are the words they’re forced to say. Sure, there are plenty of times where an actor gets to work with the material and create their character in their own voice, but often, it’s lost to the idea of the overall story. With Christina Hodson, the screenwriter for Birds of Prey, and Margot Robbie, though, it was more about understanding the unique voice of Harley Quinn and incorporating her into the story, rather than just throwing her in without a conscious effort.
Talking to CBR, Hodson brought up the unique nature of bringing Harley to life, meaning she actually sat with Margot Robbie and got into the character’s head to understand her:
Harley’s got a completely different voice to anyone, but that’s also the fun of it. She’s got such a distinctive voice, and getting to work with Margot [Robbie] for so long was so awesome. We both just got to get inside her head, to a point where — it was kind of fun, while we were in development people were asking us questions like ‘maybe she can do this, maybe she could hit this person’ and we were like ‘[Harley] would never hit that person! She’d kill this other person, but she’d never hit that person! It was fun living inside [Harley’s] head because she’s a wild ride, and the hope is that we got to make the movie into a wild ride.
The approach of working through Harley as a character and how she’d fit into the narrative is an interesting way of looking at the story, and one that I find refreshing. So often, we’re confronted with the idea of getting the plot right and worrying too much about the logic of everything, and it is often at the expense of character arcs. Hearing Hodson and Robbie actually talk through Harley and her mindset and working that into the overall story? It’s both beautiful and fascinating to me.
Hodson has already shown her ability to get into the mind of a character and show their inner desires in a way that loops you into her story completely, as seen in Bumblebee. And now, with Birds of Prey, this approach of talking through Harley Quinn, who, as Hodson points out, has her own distinctive voice, gives me a lot of hope for this movie.
And, luckily for us, the movie that Margot Robbie, Christina Hodson, and Cathy Yan ended up making was, pretty much, the movie they set out to make in the first place.
It’s funny. Things change, obviously. It’s a process, everything goes through so many different cycles. But weirdly, the heart of it and the core of it is really similar to where it began. We always try to do something weird and bold and risky and strange and different, and I hope we achieved that. Small story things have changed, but the heart and the essence and the style of it has always been the same.
I’m extremely interested in Birds of Prey because, so far, the female-led movies of the DCEU have been infinitely better than the movies with male directors—the exception to this rule being Aquaman, but still, the DCEU gave Patty Jenkins the reins on Wonder Woman, and now, with the female team behind Birds of Prey, I’m excited to see where the DCEU goes, as long as it leaves behind the Martha-centric ideas.
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