David Dastmalchian has been working for a while, but it feels like he’s on the cusp of truly blowing up. He was recently cast in Voyage of the Demeter, and this summer, he looks poised to steal the show as Polka-Dot Man in The Suicide Squad. During an interview on the Suicide Squad set, Dastmalchian talked about the role, revealing Polka-Dot Man’s tragic backstory. In addition to that, The Suicide Squad director James Gunn spoke about choosing the character, “the dumbest DC character of all time,” for the film.

If you know who Polka-Dot Man is at all, you likely think of him as a punchline. After all, his damn name is Polka-Dot Man, and he wears a costume covered in polka-dots (Perhaps the only DC villain sillier is Crazy Quilt, a villain who wears a costume that looks like…a crazy quilt). But despite all this, Polka-Dot Man is about to make his big-screen debut in The Suicide Squad.

Speaking with Games Radar, The Suicide Squad director James Gunn said he deliberately sought out the “dumbest” character he could think of when writing the film. “Polka-Dot Man is great, but I did think I needed a character who’s thought of as one of the dumbest ever,” Gunn said. “So I went and looked online, ‘Who’s the dumbest DC character of all time?’ and it was Polka-Dot Man. We’ve turned that character who’s a sad, pathetic character into a character who’s depressed because people think he’s stupid. He has a very tragic story that you learn about throughout the film – to be able to add depth to characters who are thought of as the silliest is a fun thing for me to do.”

A Lifetime With a Lot of Pain

David Dastmalchian plays the role of Polka-Dot Man/Abner Krill in The Suicide Squad, and based on the trailers alone – which show Polka-Dot Man as a morose, suicidal weirdo – Dastmalchian is on the verge of stealing the entire film from his fellow cast members. The actor spoke about playing the role, and the character’s personal motivations.

“I can tell you that my character Abner is someone who has lived a lifetime with a lot of pain, a lot of shame, a lot of solitude because of a condition that he has,” Dastmalchian said. “That condition was something that he decided at a certain point in time would be best suited to hurt other people or at least perform acts of crime, so that he could get some vengeance against a cruel and unfair world. Things haven’t gone great in Abner’s life basically since day one, so as we find him entering this story, he’s somebody that has never been a part of anything, so even in a bunch of really broken misfits and criminals, he’s maybe found one of the first moments in his life where he’s a part of something.”

I’m excited to see The Suicide Squad, and a big part of that excitement comes from wanting to see Dastmalchian. I just hope he gets to survive the mission. The Suicide Squad hits theaters and HBO Max on July 30, 2021.

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