A new interview:
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When ASOS Likes meets Elizabeth Olsen on the day of the European premiere for her latest blockbuster, Captain America: Civil War, the 27-year-old actress has a confession for us: ‘I haven’t seen it yet. I can’t see it tonight, either, because I have to do Alan Carr. I’ll see it when I get to LA next week.’ So hectic is her life that she describes it as a ‘jigsaw puzzle’, trying to fit her Avengers commitments around her first producing projects (more on those later), but clearly enjoying every little detail of her job. Squeezing in a chat during two back-to-back days of press, we delved deep into the world of Wanda Maximoff, Scarlet Witch and, of course, Elizabeth Olsen.
What’s your favourite thing about playing Wanda/Scarlet Witch? There are lots of things. I love the challenge of her character and I learn more about her every time we get a new script. We’re continuing to have her figure out her abilities and become more confident in her skin, and then complicate that. She starts to find her own a bit in this film. I also love the movement; it’s like a dance. The choreography isn’t random, it’s all very specific, so I really enjoy that creative part of the job. Jenny White, the choreographer, and I – based on what Joss [Whedon] wanted from Avengers – have created this whole new world of movement. It’s really fun.
Were you at all surprised that she was on Team Cap? No! It made total sense to me, for a lot of reasons. There’s continually issues between her and Stark, so it wasn’t a surprise at all. I like our group.
There’s a point in the film where Wanda becomes quite insecure because she’s not sure how to harness her power. Do you think that makes her seem more human and relatable for the audience? I think part of her insecurity comes from the idea that there are casualties in their job. Hurting innocent people. And there’s a confusion over why she is the way she is – obviously she volunteered for it, but what is she supposed to do with it now? That’s why she has such a close relationship with The Vision, because they’re in a similar situation. To me she’s relatable because it’s my job to relate to her and make it personal, but I hope she’s relatable to people, I hope they all are.
Both she and Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow are strong, kickass women; is it important to you to be portraying those kind of characters, so girls going to see the movies have someone to look up to? Totally. I think Disney is really well aware of their audience, that it’s huge and they have this platform to say things with a larger meaning, rather than just presenting the film itself. Between Star Wars and the Marvel Universe I think they really work hard on representing a group that is underrepresented. It’s important for boys to see girls as superheroes too, and not just other boys, so I think it’s great and really special.
The cast is still predominantly male: how do you find it working with such a big ensemble male cast? I mean, every job I work with a lot of men; the majority of all crews are men. I’m not saying that’s how it should be, but that’s my experience, so it’s not any different than what I’m used to. I also surround myself with women when I’m working, so I have my dialect coach Sarah Shepherd, my choreographer Jenny, and they’ve become really close friends of mine. I have a lot of female energy when I’m working and I feel like there are other jobs that actually have more masculine energy, because I don’t have that close group. We’re a little chick posse and it’s awesome.
If you were going to do a film with a big, all-female ensemble cast, who would you want to work with? There are so many! I would feel weird listing them, honestly. There are so many people I want to work with generally, like directors: I’d like to work with Sean Durkin again, who directed me in Martha Marcy May Marlene. I’d like to work with Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman, Wes Anderson, Woody Allen, Tarantino… Yeah, a lot of them. Coen Brothers…
Having appeared in both smaller indie films and massive blockbusters, what would you say you’ve learned from working on those different sets? I was just so happy to be working at first and then I got excited that people were offering me interesting characters, but I wasn’t really thinking about directors, and now it’s just a whole different thing. You learn how you want to do things. I didn’t have three years of struggling before getting a job that did well. I understudied, in theatre for a year, but I was still at school. I’ve just been learning as I go.
You’re very good at keeping away from the paparazzi, but have you found that more of a struggle since doing bigger films like Avengers? I think for the most part you’re in control of how much attention you want to receive. Sometimes it’s a fluke, like people become obsessed with you. That’s never going to happen to me, because it hasn’t happened yet. The only person that could create that crippling experience of not being able to have your own private life is yourself and it’s something that’s very important to me, and to everyone in my family, to not… You know, part of my job is also to talk to a bunch of journalists and writers, and I love talking about my work and ideas. I don’t like talking about my personal life. I did an interview recently, and we probably spent two sentences out of an hour conversation talking about my sisters, but half the article is about my family. That’s not in my control, people are interested, but we keep it all private.
You’ve been working with your Captain America co-star Jeremy Renner on new thriller Wind River. How has that been? We wrapped on Friday! It was great. I’m pretty sure Jeremy is the only actor I’ve worked with twice, beyond the franchise, obviously. We had a really amazing experience together and it’s funny, because our relationship in that script is kind of similar to the relationship between Scarlett Witch and Hawkeye, where they’re good teammates and a good balance for one another. But it’s a whole other world, it takes place in an Indian reservation and it’s about a young girl who’s been found raped and she died. The elements were horrible, we were in deep snow all the time, but it was a really great experience.
And what do you have coming up when the Captain America press tour wraps? We’re going to film Infinity Wars, Avengers 3 and 4, so everything else is a scheduling nightmare. I have a couple of things I’m trying to produce and it’s my first time packaging things, and putting things together, so that could take five to 10 years or it could take one year, or never work out. Both are television, but they’re completely different; one’s an animation that’s really hilarious and the other is a much more grounded drama. Those things are exciting for me. And then there are a couple jobs coming up this summer that we’re trying to figure out, but I can’t really talk about those yet, because I don’t know if they’re real. You don’t know they’re real until your first day on set!