Jamie Chung changed that image when she appeared as the DC Universe’s first Asian-American Harley Quinn.
The star visited Entertainment Weekly’s 2024 Comic-Con Studio on Saturday with his Batman: Caped Crusader co-stars Hamish Linklater (Batman) and Minnie Driver (in an as-yet-unnamed role) to talk about the changes being made to the new film, which premieres on August 1 on Prime Video.
Chung said her character, Harley Quinn, doesn’t have a “connection” or identity with the Joker. “She’s her own person,” she said. “She’s a very twisted, sick person.”
“What I loved about this character is that we flipped it,” Chung said of Harley Quinn (aka Dr. Harleen Quinzel), who is Asian. “She’s so welcoming and so hilarious as the psychiatrist.”
“It was really fun playing on the range,” she continued. “I got to try something different.”
Jamie Chung as Harley Quinn.
Amazon Prime Video, Getty
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“They actually had to re-record a lot of Harley Quinn’s parts because they saw something, they found something and they wanted to go more in that direction,” she added.
The project brought back fond memories of her youth: “Just seeing the opening of the show brought back so many memories from my childhood,” Chung said, adding that she liked how the creators “reimagined these characters” and “switched them up a bit.”
She also revealed that after playing a “terrible version” of the original Harley voice actress, Arleen Sorkin, she was told to quit and “try something else.”
Bruce Timm, who co-created the character and developed the TV storyline, previously told EW, “We thought it might be interesting to have her on the show… not as the Joker’s girlfriend. A big part of it was to do a basic inversion. The original Doc Quinzel was a little more serious, and then when she became Harley, she became really goofy and weird. So we thought, what if we reversed that? As Doc Quinzel, she’s a little more quirky and fun, but as Harley Quinn, she’s scary.”
The animated series, which follows Bruce Wayne’s transformation into Batman, also features voice actors such as Christina Ricci and Haley Joel Osment.
Lady Gaga will also reprise her role as Harley in Todd Phillips’ Joker sequel, Joker: For Do.
Check out more footage of the Batman: Caped Crusader cast above.