COMICBOOK: Throughout the nine episodes of WandaVision, Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) kept an entire town of New Jersey residents under her sway. Within “The Hex” she established around Westview, the Scarlet Witch served as the puppet master to hundreds, if not thousands, of residents. Olsen herself says the character’s actions were criminal, and she’ll most certainly be on the run by the time we see her next.
“Like, she just did something that makes her a criminal. So, in my mind, the next step in her life is this new sense of identity, of knowing the acts that she committed and her own accountability of it,” Olsen said on the latest episode of Vanity Fair’s Little Gold Men podcast.
That’s when the actor added that she feels like she needs to be on the run, thanks to the involvement of SWORD and other governmental agencies.
“All these big trucks are coming in and all these military men and women are coming into assess the situation, and she flies away,” Olsen continued. “Like, she needs to escape, or she’s going to get in trouble, and she doesn’t wanna get in trouble. And so she went away with her grief and her shame and is now… I didn’t think of her as… I don’t think of her being in that home in the tag, she is at peace but she now, for the rest of her life, hiding.”
Whatever the case, Scarlet Witch’s future stories will have to be explored outside of WandaVision. Olsen has confirmed the show was developed as a limited series, suggesting a second season isn’t in the works as of yet and likely won’t be.
“No, it’s definitely a limited series,” Olsen shared with Variety earlier this month. “I mean, I’m saying that. I don’t know. With Marvel, you can never say no. Do people die? You know?”
WandaVision is now streaming in its entirety on Disney+.
On this week’s Little Gold Men, Olsen explains why she was “mortified” to share WandaVision with the world and teases her upcoming turn in Doctor Strange.
VANITY FAIR: Despite her onscreen superhero status, Elizabeth Olsen admits to Vanity Fair’s Joanna Robinson that she gets “panic dreams” before beginning a new project. That was never more so the case than with WandaVision, the genre-bending Disney+ series that imagined Wanda Maximoff and Vision’s (Paul Bettany) married adventures through a sitcom-style lens. But after the show premiered to rave reviews and an eager fanbase, Olsen’s nerves about launching the Marvel TV empire could melt away, right?
That is, until she suited up as the Scarlet Witch once more for Sam Raimi’s upcoming sequel, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. Although writer Michael Waldron has compared the titular character to Indiana Jones, Olsen insists that the final product is edgier than that figure’s action epics. “I think it’s more than a glossy Indiana Jones movie, which I love Indiana Jones,” Olsen says on the latest Little Gold Men episode, adding, “But I feel like it has a darker thing going on.”
This week’s Little Gold Men podcast is a Disney+ double feature, featuring an interview with Sebastian Stan of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (also courtesy of Joanna). She joins Vanity Fair’s executive Hollywood editor, Jeff Giles, Richard Lawson, and Katey Rich in a conversation about Witness, which gave Harrison Ford his only Oscar nomination to date. Other top of mind topics include the lackluster box office performance of In the Heights, Emmy buzz for Bo Burnham’s Netflix special Inside, and Pixar’s newest release Luca, which arrives on Disney+ Friday.
This is a partial transcript:
You’ve talked about Wanda coming into her own power, discovering her power. Something that I think is so interesting is you were doing work as an executive producer on Sorry For Your Loss. And I was wondering what that experience taught you about your power, your ability to have input over your acting choices or your acting roles going forward?
It was incredible. It was truly one of the greatest learning experiences I could have had. I saw how everything can be done if I ever wanted to direct something, which I’m not sure yet. But I have seen how maybe the healthiest way to crew up a show is, to a writers room, to the whole journey in between and editing and color correction and sound mixing. All the things that I had wanted to experience, I got to do that on that show. And it created this neverending voice in my head that now just expresses all of her opinions when I’m on set. It’s great working with. Like, I’m starting to work with another director right now and it’s great just saying, when people sometimes would ask me, “How would you like to work?” I wouldn’t really know how to answer that because I’ve always been malleable to if other actors like working specific ways. I’m cool to kind of be fluid in that zone.
Now I can just say, “It’s really good for me to have all the information, just so I don’t have to ask questions in my head and think, why are they doing that instead of this?” But if I just have the information of “Oh, this is an issue, so we’re doing this instead” then I’m not going to try and make up what the issue is and spend weeks trying to figure out, “Why are we doing it this way?” S I know that that’s now something. I just like having information, even when I’m not a producer. It just helped. I’m sure other actors would be like, “How the fuck would you keep all that straight?” And it actually rests my brain. It rests my monkey brain, I think. to just have facts and information about how everything’s going, why schedules are changing. Yeah, I loved that experience.
So thinking about who you were on that set versus who you were on Age of Ultron, which is so much earlier in your career, how do you compare those two women?
Continue reading »
‘WandaVision,’ ‘Falcon and Winter Soldier’ and ‘Loki’ Stars on Missing Tom Hiddleston’s Lectures and Who Texts Kevin Feige the Most
VARIETY: Being a superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe equips its stars with unique powers both on-screen and off.
“We all have a number sign above our heads when we make independent films [for] whether or not we can sell them internationally to help get financing,” says Elizabeth Olsen. “If we want to do that, it does allow us to be able to do that. So, I think that’s a great benefit to being a part of such a huge international franchise.”
Olsen first appeared as Wanda Maximoff, aka the Scarlet Witch, in Marvel Studios’ “Avengers: Age of Ultron” in 2015 before going onto such films as “Captain America: Civil War” and “Avengers: Endgame.” In-between she worked on indies including “Ingrid Goes West” and the television series “Sorry for Your Loss” for Facebook Watch. This past television season, though, she brought her big-screen superhero to Disney Plus, headlining “WandaVision” alongside Paul Bettany.
The ability to flit between platforms at all can be special for actors, but to do so with the same character is a testament to the power of the MCU. And Olsen and Bettany were only the first to move from film to TV under the Marvel Studios banner. Soon they were followed by Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan in “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” and Tom Hiddleston in “Loki,” all of whom are taking part in a special panel at Variety’s Virtual TV Fest.
WE GOT THIS COVERED: As far as we know, Elizabeth Olsen isn’t involved in Spider-Man: No Way Home, but she has been rumored for a cameo appearance just like virtually anyone to have ever appeared in either a Sony or Marvel Studios movie involving the web-slinger in some fashion over the last two decades.
Whether she winds up putting in an appearance or not, we can gather that Tom Holland’s third solo outing will be the middle chapter in a multiversal trilogy, bookended by Disney Plus’ WandaVision and next March’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. So, even if Scarlet Witch doesn’t show up in person during No Way Home, you can guarantee that her fingerprints will still be all over the broad strokes of the plot.
Of course, the majority of the most recent speculation surrounding the MCU threequel has revolved around the Sinister Six, with three members each hailing from both the Sam Raimi and Marc Webb timelines. And we’ve now heard from our sources – the same ones who told us Captain America 4 with Anthony Mackie was in the works long before it was confirmed – that Wanda will be responsible for them entering the MCU.
According to our information, it’ll be tied to WandaVision‘s post-credits scene, where the franchise’s most powerful hero hears her children calling out to her from a different reality. This causes Scarlet Witch to go on a tear through the multiverse to try and find them, with the butterfly effect eventually weakening the barriers and allowing Green Goblin, Sandman, Doctor Octopus, Lizard, Electro and Rhino to make their way to the present day timeline where they’ll cause some serious trouble for Peter Parker, presumably leading to Spider-Man: No Way Home‘s protagonist roping in a bit of multiversal backup of his own to try and even the odds in his favor.
VARIETY: Variety and PBS SoCal are gearing up for the 14th season of their Emmy-winning series “Variety Studio: Actors on Actors.”
The new season, which premieres on June 18 on PBS SoCal, features Kaley Cuoco and Elizabeth Olsen, Ewan McGregor and Pedro Pascal, and Emma Corrin and Regé-Jean Page among the pairs.
This season’s conversations are:
Kaley Cuoco (“The Flight Attendant”) with Elizabeth Olsen (“WandaVision”)
Ewan McGregor (“Halston”) with Pedro Pascal (“The Mandalorian”)
Nicole Kidman (“The Undoing”) with Chris Rock (“Fargo”)
Emma Corrin (“The Crown”) with Regé-Jean Page (“Bridgerton”)
Kathryn Hahn (“WandaVision”) with Jason Sudeikis (“Ted Lasso”)
Josh O’Connor (“The Crown”) with Anya Taylor-Joy (“The Queen’s Gambit”)
Bowen Yang (“Saturday Night Live”) with Jean Smart (“Hacks”)
Uzo Aduba (“In Treatment”) with Billy Porter (“Pose”)
Gillian Anderson (“The Crown”) with Elisabeth Moss (“The Handmaid’s Tale”)
The new season, filmed entirely from the actors’ homes, includes exclusive, one-on-one conversations between actors from potential Emmy-contending series.
Clips will appear on Variety.com a day before Variety’s Actors on Actors issue hits newsstands on June 9.
The four episodes will premiere on PBS SoCal on June 18 at 8 p.m., 8:30 p.m., 9 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., and re-air on KCET on July 2 at 7 p.m., 7:30 p.m., 10 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. All episodes will stream on pbssocal.org and on the free PBS Video app following their premieres. “Variety Studio: Actors on Actors” will air on PBS stations across the nation starting in June and on World Channel later this summer (check local listings).
“We are thrilled to present ‘Variety Studio: Actors on Actors’ to showcase this season’s top award-contending talent,” said Michelle Sobrino-Stearns, president and group publisher of Variety. “We are grateful to our wonderful partner, PBS SoCal, for continuing to support this multi-Emmy award-winning show.”
