HBO’s Peacemaker—the series spinoff of James Gunn’s Suicide Squad movie—is a fun show, and the cast has been firing on all cylinders. While John Cena has been excellent as the titular character, the person I keep coming back for is Danielle Brooks as Leota Adebayo.
Warning: Contains spoilers for Peacemaker
Introduced with her wife as having moved to a new location for a secret job, we see Leota Adebayo as the newcomer to the Project Butterfly task force.
Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) wonders what the hell Leota did to get put onto such a shitty project. Well, Leota Adebayo is also Leota Waller, daughter of Amanda Waller.
Now, from my research, Amanda in the comics has historically been written as a widow whose husband, one of her sons, and one of her daughters were murdered in an incident at the Cabrini–Green housing projects in Chicago (the ones from Candyman).
Leota is an original character created by James Gunn (and named after his own mother), and Brooks told Variety that he made the role with her in mind after watching the actress in Orange Is the New Black.
“[…] we ended up having a meeting, and we just hit it off. I explained to him [that] I’ve never seen anyone like myself in this world,” Brooks shared. “It was really exciting for James to say, ‘I like you the way you are. I don’t want you to get all this training and try to lose 100 pounds’ or all this stuff. He didn’t try to make me fit into his world. He said, ‘You already fit.’ I really appreciated that.”
Told that the role was about a young woman “trying to provide for a family” and being a badass lesbian in that role, Brooks praised Gunn for “writing the humanity of a person” and handling the complexity of a character like Peacemaker that has so much fascism attached to it.
As for the twist of being Waller’s daughter, that was a pleasant surprise for her in multiple ways.
“She just means so much to me, because she really is my representation in so many ways,” Brooks said (via ScreenRant). “Just seeing someone that has come from the same state that I have come from, small town girl, you know, struggling and getting to Juilliard and making a way for herself. You know, it’s the same thing I’m trying to do and am doing. So when James told me you’re going to be Amanda Waller’s daughter, I was like, ‘Yo! Please tell me she’s coming to Canada!’”
So far in the series, Leota has been such a delight because of Brooks’ own comedic skills and endless charm, but the fact they have set up this Hitchcockian twist with her is something that embeds her into the fabric of the plot in a great way.
I love that she is the funny, kind, and cheery foil to not just the bitter rest of the Task Force, but to her own mother. Her budding friendship with Chris/Peacemaker is great to watch, as they are both children trying to live outside of their parents’ shadows. James Gunn has set up an amazing dynamic with the team, and I look forward to it every week.
(image: HBO Max)
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