The Story of Harley Quinn's Creation in BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES
The fan-favorite DC character Harley Quinn made her big debut in Batman: The Animated Series. She was an original character created specifically for the show and she ended up being one of the most popular DC characters ever. She initially appeared in Episode 22, “Joker’s Favor.”
For those of you who are curious about the story behind the creation of the character, series creator Bruce Timm and writer Paul Dini shared all the details you need to know about Harley Quinn’s conception with Vulture.
The inspiration came from Dini’s college friend, Arleen Sorkin, who was best-known at the time for playing Calliope Jones on Days of Our Lives. In one episode of that show, she was wearing a jester costume. Dini explained that when he was sick one day, he popped in a VHS tape that Arleen had given him of her best Days of Our Lives clips.
He explained: “I had already decided to give the Joker a henchwoman in the script, and thought Arleen’s screwball persona would be a good contrast to the Joker’s dangerous insanity. The story is pretty dark, with Joker singling out an ordinary man and taking delight in torturing him, so I needed a few laughs in there to break the tension. I also liked the idea of putting Harley in some sort of colorful costume, harkening back to the molls of the 1960s live-action Batman series. Seeing Arleen in the jester costume around that time just helped fix that image in my brain.”
Bruce Timm shared that Dini wanted to named her Harley Quinn: “Obviously, a wrecked version of harlequin, and he did a rough design for her, which was, frankly, not very good. It was just weird. It had like a ’60s kind of vibe to it. It was just odd. Charming, but odd. I thought that we could improve on that, so I immediately started researching traditional harlequin gear, and did a simplified supervillain version of that.”
Timm’s design is the one that was ultimately used in the series. Arleen Sorkin ended up providing the voice of the character and when talking about how she came up with the voice, she said: “I could give you an impressive answer about how I did the voice, but I don’t have one. I read it and I just thought that that was the best voice for her in the moment. I don’t want to pretend that I am this woman with great range, so I picked the one that I could do easily, and it worked. Paul decided to make her Jewish, so I put a little Yiddish sound in there. At least we know the Joker isn’t an anti-Semite. It’s his only good quality.”
Timm went on to explain that Harley Quinn was originally intended to just be a one-off character, they never planned on bringing her back! But, that all changed when they saw the first footage of her. He said: “When we got the first episode that she appeared in, when it came back from overseas, and we saw her animated, and the combination of the visual with Arleen Sorkin’s performance, it was kind of magical.”
After that, Dini started planning out her return telling Timm shared: “So Paul immediately started plotting her return, and he would say, ‘I want to bring that Harley Quinn character back in another episode.’ I would be like, ‘I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. But she was really cool and, yeah, she was cute. Okay, fine.’ So Paul kept bringing her back. I didn’t put up too much of a fuss, and then one thing led to another, and she was this really popular character.”
The rest is history! It’s amazing how much this character has blown up in popularity over the years. When the character was first conceived, the creators had no idea of the impact she would have on DC fandom, or that she would have gotten the live-action treatment.