We’ve done our honest best to weather the fierce internet storms surrounding Jared Leto’s attention-humping Suicide Squad performance, from the dead pigs, to the old souls, to the used condoms he sent the rest of the movie’s cast like some kind of scuzzbag Santa. So when something beautiful briefly emerged from Leto’s tattooed clown cocoon—like a series of photos that seemed to show him falling, childlike, into love at first sight with the lime-green Gucci coat he was later seen wearing at the movie’s London premiere—we grabbed onto it and held on for dear life.
LMFAOOO pic.twitter.com/8i6xG3hswS
— ˗ˏˋAndrew ˎˊ˗ (@jasonnmomoa) August 3, 2016
Besides being amusingly goofy, there was something deeply humanizing about the pictures, which seemed to show a dude locking eyes with an awesome looking jacket-pink-pants combo—which, no tea, no shade, no pink lemonade, he legitimately rocked at the premiere—and responding with pure delight.
But no such joy can last for long in the face of Jared Leto and his Serious love of Truth, as Vanity Fair discovered when it asked Leto about the meme this week. “The thing about the photo is—I’m going to be honest with you—I was actually making a face at someone across the runway,” Leto said, while acknowledging that he does indeed love his beautiful coat. “Sorry to ruin your meme,” he added, before cryptically tacking “Perception versus reality”—which we’re just going to start peppering into our dinner party conversations from now on—onto the end of his statement.
When asked whether it wouldn’t, maybe, be more fun if we all just pretended he was looking at the jacket, like the fun narrative that’s living in our heads, the one-time Joker refused to play along with the joke. “Or you could tell the real story,” he responded. “That would be interesting.” Perceptions versus reality, Mr. Leto. Perception versus reality, indeed.