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Movies & TV

04th Feb 2020

Birds Of Prey cast discuss the connections to Kill Bill and Batgirl

Rory Cashin

birds of prey

The stars of Birds Of Prey tell JOE what might be next for their characters.

After the events of Suicide Squad, it is fair to say that Harley Quinn left quite an impression.

Even if you weren’t a fan of that movie, you can’t deny that Margot Robbie’s performance as Quinn was pretty spectacular. So when you’re looking at giving that character a follow-up that is also a new team-up movie, you’d want to surround her with other, equally interesting and memorable characters.

So when JOE was chatting to the cast of Birds Of Prey in the run up to the release of the movie, we had to ask them about the past, present, and future of these characters.

Previously, we have also chatted to Mary Elizabeth Winstead about the ending to Scott Pilgrim now that we’re a decade on from that movie, but we did also talk about the blockbuster at hand.

When watching Birds Of Prey (full review on Big Reviewski very soon!), we couldn’t help but notice that there was a big similarity between Winstead’s killer character, Huntress, and Uma Thurmann’s character in Kill Bill, and Winstead quickly picks up on that:

“Oh really? Oh yeah, she had that list and she was checking them off, you’re right!”

When we asked if Kill Bill’s hero, or any other famous big screen protagonists influenced her role, it became less about specifics for the actress.

“I would say, other than the comic books, no,” Winstead told JOE. “But having said that, films like Kill Bill are hugely influential to me, as a human being. I love female action movies like that, and I remember seeing that in the theatre and being blown away and saying ‘I wanna do that!’

“So it wasn’t something that was in the forefront of my mind while I was making it, but it was absolutely in the lexicon of my existence! So it was in there somewhere!”

Meanwhile, we were also chatting to Ella Jay Basco, who plays Cassandra Cain in Birds Of Prey, and fans of the comics will know that Cain eventually grows up to be none other than Batgirl herself.

Was that progression a conversation that she had with the movie’s makers?

“I mean, hopefully,” Basco tells JOE. “The Birds Of Prey is more of Cassandra Cain’s origin story, and I’m a big fan of Cassandra Cain. I didn’t necessarily know who she was when I first got the role, but now I’m in love with her.

“And I definitely hope that it could end up that way. Maybe. Possibly!”

Watch our full interview with them both right here:

JOE was also lucky enough to chat to more of the movie’s stars, namely Margot Robbie (playing Harley Quinn) and Jurnee Smollett-Bell (as Black Canary), and you can watch that interview here, as well as our interview with the movie’s director Cathy Yan, which you can check out here.

Birds Of Prey is released in Irish cinemas on Friday 7 February.

Clip via Warner Bros. UK

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