The Secret Reason King Shark's Pants Keep Falling Down In The Suicide Squad [Exclusive]
James Gunn's 2021 film "The Suicide Squad" features a lot of unusual animal people. There is a human weasel monster called Weasel (Sean Gunn), there is a young woman who can wrangle rats called Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior), there is a stories-high intelligent starfish monster named Starro, and most amusingly, there is King Shark, a bone-headed (cartilage-headed?) bruiser that is half-human and half-Carcharodon. He spends his time on screen eating human heads, ripping people in half, and being concerned that he doesn't have any friends.
King Shark was voiced by Sylvester Stallone, but visually realized using advanced motion-capture CGI. The on-set actor who provided King Shark's movements was Steve Agee, a friend of the director, who also played a character named John Economos, a sidekick to Viola Davis' character Amanda Waller. Agee had appeared in several of Gunn's previous projects, including "Super" where he played "Comic Book Store Jerk," and "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2," where he played a character named Jef. Most recently, Agee appeared as John Economos in a mid-credits tease at the end of "Shazam! Fury of the Gods."
Agee was recently interviewed by /Film's own Sarah Milner, and he talked about what he brought to the physical performance of King Shark. He pointed out that one of King Shark's small physical quirks was, in fact, the result of a slight wardrobe malfunction. It seems that whenever King Shark was seen pulling up his sagging pants in "The Suicide Squad," it was reflecting an actual moment when Agee's costume began to slip.
Why wear pants?
What might have been mistaken for a fun physical quirk of the character, Agee pointed out, was born of necessity. There are behind-the-scenes photos of "The Suicide Squad" online, where you can see the on-set getup that Agee had to wear. In addition to the neck-to-toe motion-capture wetsuit, Agee was also fitted with an outsize foam vest and a wired head/bike helmet appliance to illustrate where his character's eyes and face were going to be when finally inserted in post-production. For reference, Agee also wore the cut-off denim shorts that King Shark was to wear on screen in the final cut. It turns out, wearing jeans shorts over a wetsuit is tricky business. As Agee said:
"James [Gunn] kind of let me do my own thing physically. It was really funny though, because if you notice in the movie, he's always adjusting and pulling up his shorts while he is running. That was me doing that. [...] It was totally real. They gave me shorts to wear over my spandex body suit, and they were a little too loose, and spandex is really slippery. So every time I was running, I was pulling up my shorts. And when I watched the movie, I was like, 'Oh my God, they actually used [that].' It's kind of funny they used that. So yeah, that was all me."
Watching King Shark constantly pull up his falling pants not only gave "The Suicide Squad" a mild slapstick vibe, but it added an element of humanity to the film's unreadable shark man. Sharks, after all, aren't known for their expressive faces, so it was largely up to Agee to give the character, well, his character. Saggy jeans shorts, it seems, did the trick.