The Marvel Cinematic Universe team isn’t playing around when it comes to keepings top secret projects under wraps. Kat Dennings, who played assistant Darcy Lewis in both Thor and Thor: The Dark World and is now reprising her role for the Disney+ series WandaVision, recalled some wild tactics they used to protect its characters and story lines.
During an interview with Crooked’s Keep It podcast, the 34-year-old revealed that when she was first auditioning for Thor, Marvel kept her mostly in the dark.
“It was so secret that I didn’t know what I was auditioning for,” she recalled. “I have no idea what’s going on. I don’t know what the movie is, all I know is that it’s a superhero movie and I’m like ‘Am I a superhero?’ What do I wear, like, leggings? What do I do?
“So, I was like, I’ll toe the line. I’ll try and look a little cute, but I don’t know who I’m playing cause you get fake sides,” she added.
Not only was Denning given a fake script and a fake character, she was also given a fake address for her audition.
“”I looked around, and I was like ‘There’s no-one at this address’ and then someone came over in a golf cart, and he was like ‘I’m here to take you to the real place’ and I was like ‘What?'” she explained.
Joking about the situation, the Two Broke Girls star compared it to almost being kidnapped.
“100% like abduction, but it was like a different place entirely, it was so, so crazy,” she added.
Teyonah Parris’ introduction to the MCU was also shrouded in secrecy. In a recent interview with Variety’s podcast Stagecraft With Gordon Cox, Dennings’ co-star talked about her WandaVision audition, including the tiny detail that the sides (aka the pages of the script she was given) didn’t shed light on who (or what) she was up for.
“The sides — that weren’t actually the real sides — were sides to represent some of those first couple of episodes [of WandaVision],” Parris shared, referencing the show’s initial 50s and 60s aesthetic. “I was just like…didn’t you say this was for Marvel?”
Despite her confusion, the 33-year-old submitted her audition. Becoming a Marvel superhero had been a dream of hers since she was a child, after all, and she wasn’t about to miss the chance to become one, even if she didn’t know what role she was up for.
“I was so confused,” she admitted. “And they don’t give you any context — I didn’t even know the character; it just said, like, ‘Lady.’”
That “Lady,” turned out to be Monica Rambeau, a character who was first introduced as a child in the 1995 MCU Captain Marvel, played by the young Akira Akbar. As fate would have it, Parris was well-familiar with the character before she even sent in her WandaVision submission tape.
“I learned about [Monica Rambeau] specifically some years back on Twitter, because fans started fan-casting me as her. This was at least six years ago, maybe a little longer now. And so I was like, ‘Well who is Monica Rambeau, because y’all are really excited about this.’ I looked her up and I was like, ‘Oh wow, pretty cool!’” she said. “And I was like, ‘Well thanks guys but that will probably never happen.”
Paul Bettany, who stars opposite Elizabeth Olsen in WandaVision , was also given limited information before signing on. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the 49-year-old actor revealed that when his contract for the Marvel Cinematic Universe was up and he got a call from executive producer Kevin Feige asking him to come into the office, he assumed he was fired. Bettany, whose character Vision killed twice during the entire Infinity War said he looked at his wife, Jennifer Connelly, and said: “I’m outta here,” thinking that he would be asked to exit the MCU.
But, to the actor’s surprise, he was offered the television series. He later agreed to join the project which he described as an “exciting and bonkers” idea for his character’s return in the series.
Clearly covert-op casting strategies are a regular tactic for Marvel. In an interview with GQ, actor Winston Duke revealed that he didn’t even know he was auditioning for Black Panther when he was invited to read for a role.
“I was told by my agent and representative that I was going in for an “untitled Marvel project.” I had no idea what I was auditioning for,” he revealed. “I didn’t know what I was auditioning for until…maybe the third round of auditions. It was a director’s session, with [writer-director] Ryan Coogler and [executive producer] Nate Moore in the room. That’s when I realized it was Black Panther.”
