Margot Robbie Made 'Birds of Prey' as 'Platform' to Introduce 'Cool Female DC Characters' to Fans

Margot Robbie's Birds of Prey features a cast of new female characters for fans to fall in love with

Margot Robbie wants to bring more female characters to the spotlight.

That was her motivation for making Birds of Prey her next project, even though Robbie, 29, had two movies in development that featured her Suicide Squad character Harley Quinn.

“During Suicide Squad, when we would go to Comic-Con and such, I started to realize there was just such a huge fan base for Harley,” Robbie recently told Nerdist. “Whilst I was researching the character I started to read Birds of Prey and first I fell in love with Huntress, and I started looking into all of that. I was like, ‘Wow, there’s so many cool female DC characters and no one knows anything about any of them!’ So what if we had a platform for fans to get to know and fall in love with some of these other amazing women?”

This led her to prioritize Birds of Prey since Gotham City Sirens features Catwoman and Posion Ivy, two characters fans already know pretty well from previous movies.

Birds of Prey features Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Huntress, Jurnee Smollett-Bell as Black Canary and Rosie Perez as a Gotham City Police detective hunting down Ewan McGregor’s Black Mask.

“Focusing on the Gotham City Sirens, there were only three of us and we were all well known, whereas with Birds of Prey you can pick any grouping for that, and I thought that might be the perfect platform to introduce some female characters who might really have some legs in the DC Universe,” she added.

(L-r) ROSIE PEREZ as Renee Montoya, MARY ELIZABETH WINSTEAD as Huntress, MARGOT ROBBIE as Harley Quinn, ELLA JAY BASCO as Cassandra Cain and JURNEE SMOLLETT-BELL as Black Canary in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “BIRDS OF PREY (AND THE FANTABULOUS EMANCIPATION OF ONE HARLEY QUINN),” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.
Birds of Prey. Claudette Barius

Directed by Cathy Yan, written by Christina Hodson, and with Robbie also on board as a producer, Birds of Prey takes a distinctly female perspective on a character of whom some previous incarnations have veered into male-fantasy territory.

It’s definitely less male gaze-y,” Robbie told Vogue, while trying on some of Harley’s wacky new wardrobe, in the magazine’s July cover story.

Birds of Prey hits theaters Feb. 7, and Robbie will appear as Harley Quinn again in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, due Aug. 6, 2021.

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