After three films as famed Batman nemesis Harley Quinn, Margot Robbie says she’s excited to see Lady Gaga give her take on the role when she takes over in “Joker: Folie a Deux.”
During an interview for her new movie “Amsterdam” with MTV News, Robbie was asked for her thoughts on her fellow Oscar-nominated actress taking over a role she helped launch to new heights in a pair of “Suicide Squad” films and the spinoff “Birds of Prey.” Not only did Robbie give Gaga her blessing, but she also said that she wants Harley to have a long list of famous actors to play her the same way Batman and Joker do.
“It makes me so happy,” Robbie said, “because I said from the very beginning that all I want is for Harley Quinn to be one of those characters the way … like Macbeth or Batman always gets passed from great actor to great actor. Someone gets to do their Batman, or someone gets to do their Macbeth.”
Robbie continued: “I feel like, in not so many cases, are there female characters — Queen Elizabeth I, but beyond that, which I got to have a crack at as well, which I was honored to do. I was like, ‘Wow! Cate Blanchett did Queen Elizabeth I. Now I get to.’ It’s such an honor to have built a foundation strong enough that Harley can now be one of those characters that other actors get to have a go at playing. And I think [Lady Gaga will] do something incredible with it.”
Indeed, it is certain that Gaga’s take on Harley Quinn will be unlike any other we’ve seen before, much like how Joaquin Phoenix gave his own unique, Oscar-winning portrayal of Gotham’s Clown Prince of Crime in the first “Joker” in 2019.
First introduced in “Batman: The Animated Series” in 1992 and played by voice actor Arleen Sorkin, Harley Quinn was originally a psychologist in Arkham Asylum under the name Dr. Harleen Quinzel. But her life changed when she was assigned to psychiatric sessions with the Joker, who manipulated her and led her to fall in love with him to the point that she helped him break out of the asylum and became his lovesick sidekick.
In the decades since, Harley has grown beyond her second banana status to the Joker to become a popular Batman character in her own right. In 2020’s “Birds of Prey” and 2021’s “The Suicide Squad,” Robbie played Harley as she found her independence free from the Joker, becoming a force of nature that walks the line between heroism and villainy.
Harley has also gotten her own cult hit animated series on HBO Max, with Kaley Cuoco playing her as she starts her own supervillain team in an effort to get back at the Joker. But over the course of the show’s three seasons — and with a fourth on the way — Harley slowly begins to realize that despite her constant battles with the Joker and Batman, she no longer wants to be a villain despite fears that leaving the bad guy life behind might end her relationship with her wife, Poison Ivy.
After “Joker” provided a new imagining of how Batman’s most famous nemesis came to be, it’s possible that Gaga will tell Harley’s origins in her own way, further exploring how the man formerly known as Arthur Fleck is inspiring thousands of Gotham City’s downtrodden residents to embrace his furious, nihilistic worldview to get revenge on the uncaring millionaires that fill the city’s halls of power.
“Joker: Folie a Deux” has been set for release Oct. 4, 2024.