WandaVision’s Elizabeth Olsen on feminism, famous sisters and finding her power.

It’s the biggest show on TV right now and has catapulted Elizabeth Olsen to a level of fame that’s eclipsed her twin sisters, Mary-Kate and Ashley. GLAMOUR’s Entertainment Director & Assistant Editor Emily Maddick meets the down-to-earth ‘Lizzie’ for a candid chat on everything from social media to sorcery, what her siblings have taught her and what female power means to her.

GLAMOUR UK: Winding down quintessential English country lanes to the GLAMOUR April digital cover shoot – the first IRL in over a year – with Elizabeth Olsen, superstar of WandaVision, there is a palpable sense of excitement in the air. The theme of this issue is ‘fresh start’ and despite the onset drizzle, one can feel the sense of optimism and hope as the UK starts to open up for spring after our long, long winter of lockdown.

Elizabeth has been living in leafy Richmond [she ‘loves’ it] with her musician fiancé Robbie Arnett since October, while filming another Marvel franchise, Dr Strange 2, alongside Benedict Cumberbatch. “It’s a bonkers movie, they’re definitely going for that horror show vibe,” she tells me.

She’s especially looking forward to her local Petersham Nurseries restaurant opening up again, but today she is being photographed in the beautiful grounds of a 17th century mill house in Surrey. Her appearance in a patterned fuchsia Schiaparelli trouser suit and magenta tie-dyed Christian Dior denim corduroy suit against the backdrop of the English country garden is almost as marvellously incongruous as her portrayal of Wandavision’s suburban ‘housewife’ Wanda Maximoff’s use of magic to make plates fly across the kitchen or rustle up three-course dinners at the click of a finger.

Indeed, the ‘fresh start’ theme for her GLAMOUR cover is a fitting theme for Wanda. For those uninitiated in the complexities of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s latest offering, each episode of WandaVision blends the style of classic sitcoms through the ages (think Bewitched, The Brady Bunch right up to Modern Family) with Marvel characters, Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch and Vision (co-star Paul Bettany.) It takes place following the events of 2019’s film Avengers: Endgame with the two super-powered beings making a fresh start in an idyllic suburbia as husband and wife, but suspecting that everything is not as it seems. Spoiler Alert! It’s not… and the fantasy starts to unravel – along with Wanda herself.

The show has been heralded as the most feminist of all Marvel outputs to date and touches on a lot of pertinent issues, including mental health, and women’s power and empowerment. In person, Elizabeth in contrast to her on-screen character, seems grounded, open, down-to-earth and, dare I say it, remarkably ‘normal’. In fact, she tells me “‘Just be normal’ is one of my favourite things to say; ‘be normal and be kind.’”

Of course, given her now bonafide A-list status as the star of one of the biggest shows on earth (in February, the Disney+ Marvel spinoff was the most in-demand streamed programme worldwide across all platforms), Elizabeth is anything but normal – as I’m reminded when I clock her whopping great big chauffeur-driven Maserati purring outside the mill house. Her fame has now even eclipsed that of her famous-since-birth twin sisters, Mary-Kate and Ashley. When WandaVision launched in January, legions of fans went into social media meltdown after discovering that Elizabeth was the child-stars-turned fashion designers’ younger sister. (More on them coming up.)
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