Fresh off an obnoxiously ticky turn as a platinum-fronted Joker in Suicide Squad, a role he may or may not have been “tricked” into, Jared Leto is taking on a new project. He’ll be joining Ryan Gosling, Robin Wright, and Harrison Ford in Sicario director Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner sequel (due out in October 2017).
“We are thrilled that Jared has agreed to play a key role in the Blade Runner sequel,” said Broderick Johnson and Andrew A. Kosove, the movie’s producers, in a statement. “He is a phenomenal actor, and we know he will create a truly memorable, never before seen character.”
Mm-hm. Given Leto’s unhinged, attention-starved brand of Method acting, which has entailed sending dead hogs, used condoms, and bullets to his coworkers, it will be interesting to see how the actor gets into this “never before seen character.”
Here are a few guesses:
1. He will bring a homemade Voight-Kampff machine to the first table read.
But instead of presenting the scenario of a helpless tortoise trying to turn itself over in the baking sun, Leto will gauge his fellow cast members’ capacity for empathy by asking a range of emotive questions about a 20-something from Brentwood angrily telling the cashier of a taco truck that they don’t give a fuck about the “No Substitutions” rule, it’s their money and they will have their breakfast burrito with fucking egg whites. Should any one of the cast members fail, Leto will “retire” them using a Super Soaker filled with apple cider vinegar.
2. Throughout filming, Leto will greet producer Ridley Scott by cupping Scott’s face with both hands and kissing him full on the mouth, referring to him as “father,” and nothing else.
3. Leto will spend countless hours watching origami tutorials on YouTube before jimmying the lock on Ryan Gosling’s car and packing it full of expertly folded unicorns. Once a day for a month.
4. From the time of casting through the end of the press tour, in order to be sensitive to the source material’s ambiguities, and out of a general unwillingness to commit to any sort of convention, Leto will use “it” in place of all other pronouns. He’ll insist that everyone else do the same.
5. Leto will regularly turn up at Villeneuve’s house at all hours of night, demanding the director play him in chess, and refusing to leave until he does.
6. Leto will star-67 Harrison Ford’s house at 3 a.m. one day to play “The Love Theme,” breathing heavily into the receiver before hanging up. Ford will question him about it the next day, and Leto will evade him and get indignant, telling Ford that those are “somebody else’s memories.”
7. A week into work, Leto will strip down to nothing but a pair of tighty-whities and snow boots and “give himself a stigmata” by driving a rusty duplex nail through his right hand. He’ll then pull the nearest fire alarm and runs around the set howling about needing his feelings to be validated and having an “itch he can’t scratch.” After contracting tetanus, he’ll set production back while taking sick leave, ballooning spending way past the film’s budget. He’ll remind everyone that art is neither cheap nor able to be rushed, or even held to a reasonable timetable, for that matter. Then he will build a spiral staircase, right on the Blade Runner 2 set.
Yeah. That one seems the most likely.