One Meeting Is All It Took To Decide Kaley Cuoco's Harley Quinn Casting
In life, sometimes you just know when something is right. Your first sip of coffee in the morning. Cuddling up by the fire with your partner on a chilly winter night. Casting "What We Do In The Shadows" star Harvey Guillén as Nightwing in the third season of "Harley Quinn" on HBO Max. But this isn't the first time that the Gotham City siren's animated series found the perfect match. The team behind the successful series hit the jackpot when Warner Bros. made the unexpected suggestion to meet with "The Big Bang Theory" star Kaley Cuoco as the lead on their show.
Executive producer Justin Halpern has previously said that the actor wasn't even on their radar when the search had begun for their Harley. However, all it took was one meeting to get everyone on board with the idea. Like many performers who play the same character for a long period of time, Cuoco was looking to put some distance between her and Penny from "The Big Bang Theory." That's likely why she took the role of the messy, manic Cassie Bowden in "The Flight Attendant." But if she was looking for a part where she could be fully out of her comfort zone by being the polar opposite of Sheldon and Leonard's neighbor, she found it in the Clown Princess of Crime.
Mad love
While speaking to Radio Times about Cuoco's casting, writer and producer Patrick Schumacker shared that their first meeting was all it took to show everyone that she was the perfect fit for the role. This meeting, which covered the zany, irreverent direction the production had planned on taking, lasted for two hours — and the rest was history.
"Most of it was just how excited Kaley was at the opportunity to do this departure from 'The Big Bang Theory,' where she was this very nice mid-western girl, to be this supervillain and to do this kind of comedy by way of Quentin Tarantino, in terms of the violence at least. It was clear that she would be able to capture Harley's manic quality ... I think Kaley was so on board with going nuts in the recording booth, maybe it was cathartic for her or something."
Harley Quinn has had a long and fruitful history since debuting in "Batman: The Animated Series," having been portrayed by actors with as diverse takes on the character as Arleen Sorkin, Tara Strong, and Margot Robbie — each of whom have become iconic in their own ways. But rather than become an impression of any of those, the combination of Kaley Cuoco's performance and the off-the-wall writing definitely sets this latest cartoon apart from the rest. And after receiving confirmation from the showrunners that they will never break up Harlivy, let's hope that Cuoco continues as Quinn for as long as possible.
The third season of "Harley Quinn" is currently running on HBO Max with new episodes dropping each Thursday.