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Anyone who walked into a theater in 2014 not knowing their “Groot” from a “Gamora” knows that James Gunn likes to dig deep into the canon for his comic book movies. That absolutely remains true seven years later as the filmmaker dives into The Suicide Squad, an R-rated DC Comics team-up that features the likes of King Shark (Sylvester Stallone), Javelin (Flula Borg), and Peacemaker (John Cena). But there’s arguably no more obscure member of the team than the wonderfully-named Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian), a Batman villain dating back to the 1960s whose entire “thing” revolves around polka-dots.
“A deep, deep, deep cut character. Literally voted like one of, I think, the least popular characters in all of the DC canon,” Dastmalchian told Collider and a roundtable of other outlets on the Atlanta set of The Suicide Squad. Sitting next to him, Steve Agee, who plays John Economos and provides the motion capture for King Shark, interjected: “I think the word was ‘lamest’.”
But while the Polka-Dot Man of Gunn’s film is certainly going to provide his fair share of comic relief, it’s also a much more tragic—and, in all honestly, kind of disturbing—role than the trailers suggest so far. On the set, we saw test footage of Polka-Dot Man, real name Abner Krill, that revealed those polka-dots are more of a disease than a superpower. If he loses control of them, the polka-dots grow grotesquely on his skin like neon-colored boils, a genuinely unnerving bit of body horror that makes Dastmalchian look like the Elephant Man at a rave. (The actor calls the costume he wears in the film a “focusing mechanism” for Abner.) It’s a lot to take in, but Dastmalchian told the roundtable it informed every aspect of his performance.
“As you saw with the dots, and the way that when they get out of hand they can be literally like, almost look like sores on my body. It’s really intensely painful [for Abner]. So that absolutely helped shape how I was going to move and fight and sit, and do all the things that I’ll do in the film. And then [it’s about] how a disability or something that you’re embarrassed of, or that hurts you, finding a way that you can then suddenly do something with it that’s more than just suffer. Maybe it even could have a purpose. Then that changes the way you move, the way that you sit, the way you talk.”
One of the thematic driving forces of The Suicide Squad is its epic clash of personalities, the question of whether a team that includes alpha-male lunkheads like Peacemaker, big-time anti-heroes like Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), a man who throws a boomerang named Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), and a literal man-shark can find some sort of common ground. That, too, was an integral part of finding the character for Dastmalchian, playing a villain who, by the very nature of who he is, has never been a part of anything. That changes when he is literally forced, under punishment of death, to find comradery with others. (We were promised a Polka-Dot Man/King Shark bond that I simply could not be more hyped about.)
“Just say his name out loud. He doesn’t command a ton of respect out the gate. He’s somebody that hasn’t ever found much connectivity with people, because of certain things that I can’t discuss today, but also just because he’s Polka-Dot Man. That was the thing that worked for him, or he thought would work. So, it’s interesting. You have a group of exceptionally gifted or talented people at different varying degrees of strength or whatever their particular specialty might be, which might be useful, but they’re also people that are disposable in a sense to the bigger scheme of operations. I think [Polka-Dot Man has] always felt that way. So even if it’s this big fish, starting to feel like maybe there’s an alliance with some people, it’s a new feeling for Abner.”
If Polka-Dot Man sounds tailor-made to become a fan-favorite—The Suicide Squad‘s Drax, if you will—the cast of the film agrees. Agee recalls a specific day of filming early on:
“It’s is really good on the page, but Dave just brought it some more depth. We were shooting a scene with Cena, and [Idris Elba], and [Daniela Melchior], and Dave, and I, and you naturally would think that Cena is going to stand out. And he is very funny, but like Dave was really holding his own. It was just like, ‘Oh my God, he’s going to be hugely popular after this movie.”
Be on the lookout for more dispatches from The Suicide Squad set, including new details on Jotunheim, King Shark, its connections to David Ayers‘ Suicide Squad, and more. The Suicide Squad hits theaters and HBO Max on August 6th.
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