Mary
Elizabeth
WinsteadSource

The cast of Birds of Prey was interviewed by SciFi Now Magazine in Los Angeles a few months ago when they were filming the upcoming DC film. During their visit, they spoke to Jurnee Smollett-Bell (Black Canary), Margot Robbie (Harley Quinn), and Rosie Perez (Renee Montoya) as well as Chris Messina. Here are some of the highlights from the interview when they spoke to Mary who plays Huntress. You can read the full interview by visiting the gallery and clicking the pics below:

Her version of the character is Helena Bertinelli, “the daughter of a very powerful mob boss who was murdered in front of her when she was a child along with the rest of her family. So she was raised from a very young age to be a deadly assassin. And as she grows up, she essentially has one mission, which is to avenge the deaths of her family and go after the people who played a part in their murders.”

Mary also revealed that the film takes places within 24 hours and there’s something each character wants or needs so it adds a sense of urgency for all of them as to why they’re going to collide and work together. Getting along with the cast was easy for Mary who found them all “fun and funny and reverent and easy to be around.”

Finally, Mary had to do a lot of stunt training, weapons training, and discussed how she felt wearing her Huntress costume, where multiple versions of it will be seen throughout the film thanks to flashbacks:

I’m in quite a few different iterations of that look, and it was just great because they were all outfits that I could move in very easily. I was never in high heels or something so tight I couldn’t kick or roll or move in properly, and it was all very realistic in terms of being tactical…I felt very cool and very empowered, and I just really absolutely loved it.

There is a brand new cast interview in the latest issue of Empire Magazine, which you can check out in the gallery.

In the interview, we get introduced to Mary’s character Huntress, AKA Helena Rosa Bertinelli. Mary also explained why she waited so long to step into the comic book world:

The final piece in the puzzle is the militant Huntress, dressed in fishnets, leather, and with braids in her hair. Born Helena Rosa Bertinelli, she is the daughter of a powerful mob boss. As a child, her family was murdered in front of her. She trains to become an assassin to avenge their deaths. Next on her list? Roman. Mary Elizabeth Winstead has always been reluctant to act in a comic-book franchise for fear of being oversexualised. “This was momentous,” she says of working with so many women. “It’s something that was denied to me for so long. It just wasn’t on the table.”

Margot, who is playing Harley Quinn and also producing the film, said that she’s having a hard time letting go of the characters and is already considering sequels or spin-off films for the other characters.

Birds of Prey hits theaters on February 7!

Earlier this week, I mentioned that the Birds of Prey cast was going to be interviewed for the upcoming film in Total Film Magazine and now thanks to Best Of Jurnee, I have added those scans into the gallery.

 

Margot’s take on Harley’s thoughts towards Mary’s character Huntress:

She thinks Huntress is an absolute badass, because anybody who can kill that effectively and be such a mess in the head with all that childhood trauma–that’s thrilling to Harley, so she loves Huntress.

Mary on working with Margot:

She’s incredibly smart and savvy. She has a real understanding of the whole picture. It’s not like, ‘this is the Harley show, and what’s going on with Harley.’ She’s thinking about every character, and every story beat, and if it’s working or not.

Mary on her Huntress costume:

I felt so cool. I felt totally empowered and feminine. But also, I was able to move. I was able to carry weapons. I was able to do other things that the Huntress could actually be doing. And so that felt great. There was never a moment where I was like, ‘I can’t do this stunt because my pants are too tight.

Total Film Magazine’s upcoming issue features the cast of Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) on their latest cover and you can view the HQ images in the gallery! Check back this Friday for the full interview with the cast (including Mary!!) and more photos!

Speaking to the magazine, Margot Robbie (who plays Harley Quinn), explains how BoP doesn’t tie in to 2016’s Suicide Squad:

“It’s very much like the comic books where you pick up in a totally different place, and it doesn’t directly link to what happened before,” Robbie tells our sister publication Total Film magazine . “But at the same time it’s not such a leap that you’re like, ‘Oh, what’s going on?!'”

Director Cathy Yan adds that Birds of Prey is “definitely a standalone movie” with fleeting connections to Suicide Squad, such as Harley having the same mallet. “It was really fun to create our own movie, and to not feel like it had to be a sequel or a continuation of Suicide Squad,” she says.

As for if Birds will have a  connection to the upcoming Suicide Squad sequel set for 2021, Margot said this:

“Tonally, David Ayer’s world looks different to [Birds’] world, which will look different to James’s world,” she says. “So, no, there’s not a direct connection. But like the comics, it doesn’t cancel out one or the other.”

Margot also said she really enjoyed working with her female co-stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Rosie Perez, Ella Jay Basco and [director] Cathy Yan:

We bonded in a different way. I think that there was an immediate understanding between the women. We could all recognise that, ‘This is sick. We’re the chicks, and we get to do this shit. This is awesome.’”

That ready-made connection may be crucial to the movie’s success, and it’s one Robbie said was already present early on: “We didn’t really need to work at finding a bond, because we kind of all clicked to begin with. And we also did chemistry reads beforehand. So we all bounced off each other quickly and easily.”

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) hits theaters on February 7, 2020.