A 'Suicide Squad' Star Was Nearly Castrated

From the trailer alone, audiences have been promised plenty of stunts, action sequences, and weaponry in David Ayer's Suicide Squad . So with bullets flying in many scenes, it's no surprise that some of the film's core cast, which includes Margot Robbie, Will Smith, Viola Davis, Jared Leto, and Joel Kinnaman, sustained a few injuries filming these difficult scenes. Kinnaman, who plays Rick Flag, a special forces operative, has plenty of war stories from set.

As he sits down at a cafeteria style table on the Toronto set of the film in June 2015, he adjusts the tape that sticks out of his camo tank top. "That was a shell casing," he says of his injury. "We were shooting [guns], and the shell casings are burning hot, and one got caught under my shirt. This was last night."

Ouch. But according to Kinnaman, skin searing shell casings are the least of it. While the scalding hot shells were quite painful, for Kinnaman, nothing compared to being repeatedly hit in the crotch. The 36-year-old explains exactly what went down: "I'm getting tackled by these adversaries, and I'm holding my gun," he says of the scene. "This was a part of the scene we hadn't rehearsed, so I didn't have the right padding, and when you get tackled by four guys while you're carrying a gun, the gun had a tendency to hit me in the balls every take."

And during the last take of this particularly invasive scene, something, well, magical happened — but not in a good way. "The gun kind of levitated. I hit the ground, then [the gun] like changed shape in the air, and then it just speared me right in the..." he trails off. "It's no joke. I almost got castrated."

Having learned his lesson the hard way, during subsequent days shooting the scene, Kinnaman took extra precautions: "I wore a big ass cup," he laughs.

Fingers crossed Kinnaman kept all of this... parts... throughout the remainder of shooting.

Suicide Squad hits theaters August 5.

Images: Warner Bros.; Giphy