Welcome to Elizabeth Olsen Source: your best source for all things related to Elizabeth Olsen. Elizabeth's breakthrough came in 2011 when she starred in critically-acclaimed movies Martha Marcy May Marlene and Silent House. She made her name in indie movies until her role in 2014 blockbuster Godzilla and then as Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff in Marvel's Avengersand Captain America movies. Elizabeth starred in and was an Executive Producer for Facebook Watch's "Sorry For Your Loss". She is currently starring in WandaVision, the first Marvel TV Series on Disney+. She will also be in Marvel's Dr. Strange sequel and hopefully we'll see another indie movie from her! Enjoy the many photos(including lots of exclusives!), articles, and videos on our site!
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Interview: Elizabeth Olsen: ‘My life has been Marvel for four years. I don’t want to be just one character’


TIMES – The WandaVision star plays an axe murderer in the new true crime drama Love & Death. She tells Keiran Southern about growing up with her famous twin sisters and why she is ready to leave superhero roles behind

Elizabeth Olsen makes for an unlikely axe murderer. As she walks into her local deli in Studio City, Los Angeles, wearing an oversized navy Reebok jumper with her face hidden beneath sunglasses and a purple cap, it is difficult to imagine the slight 34-year-old Hollywood actress saying a cross word to anyone, never mind attacking them with a hatchet.

Thankfully the television super-producer David E Kelley — he of such buzzy hits as Ally McBeal, Big Little Lies and The Undoing — has greater vision than I do and cast Olsen as an axe-wielding killer in the drama miniseries Love & Death, first shown on HBO Max in America and now coming to ITVX, which tells the true story of a Texas housewife whose life unravels after she embarks on an affair with a neighbour.

It is a career-best performance from Olsen, which says something given how, in just over a decade, she’s gone from film-festival favourite (with indie films Martha Marcy May Marlene and Silent House) to Marvel superstardom (she plays Wanda Maximoff in the Avengers franchise and the TV series WandaVision). She is empathetic in her portrayal of Candy Montgomery, who stood trial for murder in 1980 after killing Betty Gore, her lover’s wife, hitting her 41 times with a wood-splitting axe. Jesse Plemons plays Allan Gore, Olsen’s on-screen love interest.

While Olsen is convincing as an unfulfilled wife capable of killing a love rival, I am reassured to hear that filming the scene — which is brutal in its realism — was deeply unpleasant. “It was awful,” Olsen says, adding creamer to a cup of coffee (we are speaking before the start of the Screen Actors Guild strike, which she is observing).

Lily Rabe, Olsen’s co-star who plays Montgomery’s victim, was six months pregnant at the time of filming so a stuntwoman stood in for much of the gory scene. “We had to film it over two days,” Olsen says with a wince. “It was a brutal experience.”

While Montgomery’s case is well known among true crime fans — and Hollywood producers, who have now adapted the story for the screen three times — Olsen had never heard of the axe-wielding Texas housewife when she was offered the role. It was only when speaking to Lesli Linka Glatter, the director of Love & Death, and Kelley, that she realised the series was based on a true story. Montgomery is still alive and according to reports works as a family counsellor in Georgia, but Olsen did not attempt to contact her, fearing that doing so would influence her performance. “We’re not trying to defend anyone. No one is the villain. Everyone’s culpable by the end of it,” she says. “I know this falls under the genre of true crime. But I feel like we tried to make it more of an American tragedy than falling under a genre. I know that was important to Lesli, and I felt the same way.”

Olsen was coming off two years of playing the Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff in Marvel’s film and TV universe and was on the lookout for a big-screen project that did not involve a superhero. The series’ depiction of a small-town community fraying under bizarre circumstances reminded her of the Coen brothers. “I get a little bored doing, like, really subtle, rounded films sometimes and I was hungry to play a character,” she says. “And that was a big reason why I was curious about the part. And the story seemed so wild.”

Though she has a strong Texan accent in Love & Death, in reality, Olsen is pure Valley girl, having grown up in Hollywood. Mary-Kate and Ashley, the twin sisters two years her senior, were among the most famous child stars of the 1990s after rising to prominence while sharing the role of Michelle Tanner in the sitcom Full House. Elizabeth — or Lizzie to her friends — was born in Sherman Oaks, a neighbourhood in the San Fernando Valley, to a father in real estate and a professional dancer mother.

As a four-year-old Olsen had a cameo as “girl in car” in the 1994 film How the West Was Fun, which starred Mary-Kate and Ashley. However, she says she was not a child actor like her siblings. Olsen spent four months going to auditions but stopped after her ballet teacher told her she could not appear in The Nutcracker due to missing too many rehearsals.

She was nine years old, heartbroken, and put off her acting career in favour of school, which she loved. “Anything that would take me out of school as a child, I didn’t want to do,” she says. “Even when my sisters would go travel the world every summer, filming these movies, I stayed at home and I did my musical summer camps.”

What Mary-Kate and Ashley were doing looked suspiciously like work to their younger sister and she would much rather stay home and create musicals with her friends. “My sisters were on set all the time,” she says. “What I saw them do was go to work. And what my friends and I did was play. I liked creating things with my friends.”

One musical involved Olsen and her friends playing teachers, smoking pretend cigarettes in the staff room. “My whole childhood was this creation with my friends,” she says. “Everything was a performance for us, which I’m sure was very annoying for teachers and parents.”

As she entered her teenage years Olsen began to rebel, albeit in an amusingly strait-laced way. “My version of rebelling was saying, ‘Well, I don’t want to be an actor, I want to be an accountant or I want to be an investment banker’,” Olsen says. “And so for years I said, ‘I want to be an investment banker when I grow up,’ because I was really good at math. Doing something that boring was a form of rebellion.”

The rebellion, such as it was, did not last long. By 15 Olsen had developed a love of theatre, a passion partially fuelled by a high school drama teacher. She graduated from New York University in 2013 after studying at the Tisch School of the Arts (Lady Gaga, Anne Hathaway and Angelina Jolie are other alumni). By the time Olsen had graduated she was already something of an indie darling. At the 2011 Sundance Film Festival she was fêted for two performances — playing a former cult member in Martha Marcy May Marlene and a woman being terrorised in the horror film Silent House.

Olsen attempted to shed her indie reputation with 2014’s Godzilla but there was an even bigger beast around the corner in the form of the Marvel behemoth. She played Scarlet Witch in 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron and has been part of the all-conquering Marvel machine since. WandaVision, the sitcom parody miniseries, became a surprise phenomenon upon its release in 2021, with the Disney+ streaming service crashing as fans rushed to watch the finale. It earned 23 Emmy nominations, including a best actress nod for Olsen.

When discussing what is now her most famous role, Olsen appears conflicted, proud of the work while keen not to be too closely tied to one character, perhaps dampening fans’ hopes of a WandaVision season two.

“I’m trying to figure out . . .” Olsen begins, choosing her words carefully. “Because, specifically in the last four years, my output has been Marvel. I don’t want . . . it’s not that I don’t want to be associated as just this character.

“But I really feel like I need to be building other parts back up for balance. I so much want to do films right now. And I hope some of them come together in the way I feel like they can. But yeah, that’s something that I need. I just need more, other characters in my life. There’s no longevity in one character.”

Olsen said that from 2016 she had found a “sweet spot” in choosing her roles. “And then obviously Covid happened and I had Marvel obligations,” she says. “Wind River and Ingrid Goes West were films that I was very proud to have selected and they were so different and you can’t compare them. So I just want more of that in my life just because I get satisfaction from the variation.”

Olsen, perhaps due to growing up with sisters in Hollywood, is wary of fame and does her best to live a low-key lifestyle. She drives a Toyota Prius, is not on social media and shields her private life from the press. It is an approach that has worked so far. She eloped with the musician Robbie Arnett before the pandemic, a fact they managed to keep secret for more than a year. Today she wears an understated, thin gold band on her ring finger.

“I don’t really put myself out there publicly,” Olsen says. “If I chose to, I could be living like my job is also endorsing a bunch of things I’m selling or whatever. But I’m choosing not to, because I don’t want to be seen as a celebrity, I want to just be an actor.”

Olsen hopes to start a family, which may affect the roles she takes as she wants to avoid disrupting their lives. “For right now I have a partner who’s incredibly supportive and just wants me to work on good stuff,” she says. Olsen, however, will not be allowing her children to work in Hollywood before they turn 18. Her eyes widen in horror at the very thought.

“Hard no,” she says with a laugh. “My sisters are unique so it’s not a reflection on them when I say no, I think it’s a reflection more on culture today.” Mary-Kate sought treatment for an eating disorder in 2004, and in 2012 the twins announced they were retiring from acting. Both have since led successful career second acts in fashion.

“Being younger today is already so complicated,” she adds. “To amplify it by being a child actor and then amplify it by social media, I just think it’s a lot for a kid’s development,” she says. “I think my sisters are on a totally different path than your average child actor.”

We say our goodbyes in the Los Angeles sunshine. Olsen heads to her understated Prius; a half-hearted rebel, a reluctant celebrity and, on television at least, a convincing axe murderer.

September 06 2023
Interview: Elizabeth Olsen and Meghann Fahy Break Down ‘White Lotus’ Shockers, That Daphne-Ethan Scene and Not Letting Candy Montgomery Off the Hook

VARIETY Elizabeth Olsen and Meghann Fahy deliver two of the most nuanced performances of the Emmy season, both playing complicated women who are wives and mothers. In “Love & Death,” Olsen’s Candy Montgomery is based on a real housewife in late-1970s Texas, who out of boredom instigates an affair with Allan (Jesse Plemons), a member of her church — an illicit assignation that eventually leads to Candy being on trial for murdering Allan’s wife, Betty (Lily Rabe).

In a very different setting, Season 2 of Mike White’s “The White Lotus,” Fahy plays Daphne, a character on a luxury Sicilian vacation with her husband, Cameron (Theo James), and another couple: Ethan (Will Sharpe) and Harper (Aubrey Plaza). As the tension among the four escalates, it’s both sexual and violent — and oddsmakers were entirely wrong about the identity of the dead body in the season-premiere flashback.

ELIZABETH OLSEN: I’m such a huge fan of “White Lotus.” Did you guys have all of the episodes before you started?

MEGHANN FAHY: Yeah, after I got cast, they sent all seven scripts in one go.

OLSEN: Did you have a rehearsal process? Because you kept the secret, or the illusion, between you and your husband. When we learn of the unspoken rules in your relationship, there’s no hint of it when we first meet you guys. I was curious if that was clear from the script.

FAHY: We had a conversation when we got to Italy, Theo and I and Mike White. The key, I think, to that whole relationship is that the love and affection and joy that you see Cameron and Daphne experiencing is genuine.

OLSEN: It felt that way.

FAHY: Once I knew that that was true, I didn’t have to think about it again.
Greg Swales for Variety
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July 26 2023
Interview: ‘Love & Death’ Star Elizabeth Olsen and Director Lesli Linka Glatter on How the HBO Max Show Depicts a “Crack in the American Dream”

The pair reunite to discuss David E. Kelley’s treatment of the infamous Texas true-crime story of Candy Montgomery, a housewife accused of killing her paramour’s wife.

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER HBO/Max’s Love & Death is, in the words of its director, Lesli Linka Glatter, about an American tragedy. Following Candy Montgomery (Elizabeth Olsen), the seven-part limited series examines a Texas woman who seemingly had it all — the perfect family, the perfect marriage — but there was something darker under the surface. After she embarks on an affair with Jesse Plemons’ Allan Gore, the picture-perfect facade fades away. And the tragedy that unfolded is a shocking one: When Gore’s wife, Betty (Lily Rabe), discovers the affair, she — at least according to Montgomery’s testimony — attacked her husband’s mistress with an ax, at which point Montgomery snapped and struck Gore 41 times with the weapon.

The 1980 murder has compelled readers since it was written about in Texas Monthly — so much so that Love & Death is the second time the crime has received the limited series treatment (following last year’s Candy, starring Jessica Biel in the title role).

Glatter and Olsen spoke with THR about the films that inspired the show’s tone and what it was like to shoot the grisly murder.

What was your reaction to the project when it came your way, and did anything stick out that you thought might be a challenge?

LESLI LINKA GLATTER I read the Texas Monthly articles. If this story wasn’t true, you couldn’t make it up. I could not quite believe that this was real life. I was totally fascinated by it, because the circumstances were so beguiling and intriguing to me. And then I jumped into reading the nonfiction book, Evidence of Love. And then lo and behold, David E. Kelley had been sent the same stories. We had never worked together, and I had always wanted to. What immediately made me excited and nervous simultaneously was that there was a big tone shift. There are many things in the beginning that have an inherent humor. You have an affair that starts with people talking about it for three or four months. It’s the most unsexy beginning of any affair ever. And then, this horrible murder happens. The tone shifts pretty drastically in episode four.

ELIZABETH OLSEN Candy was a character that I felt like I hadn’t played. And then [there was] the writing. There was some quirk and absurd oddity to it. I was curious when I spoke with Lesli and David to see if that was just my perspective or if that was intentional and if that was the goal. It was a world that I was excited to play around in and a woman I wanted to understand.

As an actor, what was your way into the character, beyond just reading what was given to you?

OLSEN I always start with a voice for someone, especially if there’s regionalism or a time-period shift. I don’t know what she sounds like; there were no recordings that I could listen to. Then I was trying to find what made sense — how would someone from this place, who has the value system that I was building in my mind, use their voice? Their femininity? Their agreeableness? What in the sounds will help them get what they want? And then it was like a virus … The voice became a walk, physical gestures. It was really fun building her.

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June 13 2023
Interview: Elizabeth Olsen Knows What She Wants to Do Next

ELLE

Spoilers for Love & Death below.

Before she signed onto HBO Max’s miniseries Love & Death, Elizabeth Olsen didn’t know about Candy Montgomery, the Texan homemaker and churchgoer who, in 1980, brutally murdered her ex-lover’s wife Betty Gore with an axe. And even when she received the scripts from show creator David E. Kelley (Big Little Lies) and director Lesli Linka Glatter (Mad Men), she didn’t immediately realize that it was a true story.

Audiences, however, might already be familiar Candy’s true-crime tale, if for no reason other than Hulu’s recent show Candy, starring Jessica Biel as the titular character and Melanie Lynskey as Betty. In the version featuring Olsen, the cast includes Lili Rabe (Betty), Patrick Fugit (in the role of Candy’s husband Pat) and Jesse Plemons, playing Betty’s husband, Allan Gore, who had a nearly year-long affair with Candy prior to the murdering of his wife.

At the start of their endeavor, neither Olsen nor the showrunners thought the other project was in the works. “When we were discussing doing this, we were told by multiple people that it wasn’t happening,” recalls Olsen during a recent video interview with ELLE.com. “But while we were filming, we learned that it was happening. You don’t usually sign onto something knowing that someone’s doing the same thing, because you understand it’s going to be compared,” she continues. “At this point, you just have to make peace with it. I would hope that the audiences would get something different [from this] in an interesting way.”

Love & Death, which debuts its finale today, does grant Olsen her wish when it comes to offering audiences something new, thanks in large part to Olsen’s exquisitely crafted portrayal of a restless woman out of step with her community’s conservative demands. Below, Olsen discusses her approach to Candy, some of the more challenging scenes to film through the final episode and what she would like to tackle next in her career.

What kind of responsibility goes into portraying someone who committed a true crime in terms of both empathizing with her and leaving room for the audience to have their own take?

I don’t focus on [these] pressures while filming. It’s something you think about when you make a decision and then you have to trust the creative heads of a show: your writer and your director, and trust the scripts and focus on doing your job. It’s really the before element is when you are really considering the potential weight of whether or not something makes you feel uncomfortable. I think of this event and its outcome as a kind of anomaly, which keeps people interested. Nothing really makes sense to people, the act of the crime itself as well as the outcome of the trial. And analyzing something that doesn’t make sense to us in a story is a useful way of processing things that seem frustrating and confusing to us as people.

Your performance brilliantly captures both the public persona of Candy and the private Candy. We all have those two faces, but in Candy’s case, it’s amplified because she has a performative side.

There’s a lot of research that went into these characters, but the research is limited to basically a book [Evidence of Love by James Atkinson] and some articles. Within the book, there are direct comments from the people who were a part of that, whose lives are affected, as well as letters and things like that. Specifically with her letters when she was younger, you start to understand someone’s value system. And the performance of what it means to be a woman in this location at this time is something that I was really curious about. The performative nature of femininity and how you can use it in ways to get what you want in the world was something I was curious about exploring, as well as the value systems of the location and these people.

When you think about it, there’s a lot of amazing progressive thinking going on in the late seventies, and these people chose to build a community in Texas where they could ignore those progressive changes and hold onto this idea of the nuclear family that feels dated to the fifties. And you think about what that mindset is. And I do think Candy struggled with the fact that that was her world, [because] she also understood the modernity of the time.

“The performative nature of femininity and how you can use it in ways to get what you want in the world was something I was curious about exploring”

I also think of her as someone incapable of being alone with her thoughts. That there’s always something; [she’s] someone who is so motivated by constant activity, constantly being involved in projects, building businesses. I interpreted her choice of listening to music a lot in her private time as her true inability to be alone with quiet thoughts. And the moment she is forced to have to reckon with those thoughts because of her actions is when I think you’re allowed to have a shift in the character that you see more clearly.

You and Jesse Plemons are in various intimate scenes, and I’m not just referring to sex scenes. The affair between Candy and Allan starts awkward and childlike. What went into building that together?
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May 26 2023
Interview: Elizabeth Olsen loves a puzzle

The Emmy-nominated actress plays a housewife accused of murder on HBO Max’s ‘Love & Death,’ her latest project decoding a character’s perplexing behavior.

WASHINGTON POST Elizabeth Olsen didn’t know it was a true story.

Reading an early script for “Love & Death,” the new HBO Max miniseries premiering Thursday about a small-town Texas housewife accused of ax-murdering a friend in 1980, Olsen believed Candy Montgomery’s crime to be a work of fiction. She thought the Texas Monthly articles she received with the script were short stories. It could easily have been imagined, the unsettling narrative of a woman who strikes up an affair with the husband in a fellow churchgoing couple and who, after confronted by the wife, ends up on trial for her brutal killing.

When meeting with writer David E. Kelley and director Lesli Linka Glatter, executive producers on the series, Olsen learned the truth. “It’s not O.J.,” the 34-year-old actress says, referring to the high-profile murder trial of former football player O.J. Simpson. But it still happened, and real lives were affected. She wondered how the team would present this astonishing story to audiences without sensationalizing it. And how much creative license would she be afforded in the role?

Quite a bit, it turned out. Though Montgomery was written about in the press — and in the book “Evidence of Love: A True Story of Passion and Death in the Suburbs,” from which “Love & Death” also draws — there was little footage of her to go off. (Last year’s Hulu miniseries “Candy,” starring Jessica Biel as Montgomery, hadn’t yet been released.) Olsen created her own version of Candy to ground the series, which over seven episodes explores how someone so ambitious and well-liked by her community could also behave selfishly and contain a lurking darkness.

The balance is difficult to master, but Olsen has walked such tightropes before — recently for her Emmy-nominated performance as a tortured witch in Marvel Studios’ “WandaVision,” but also dating back to her debut feature role as a disoriented cult survivor in 2011’s “Martha Marcy May Marlene.” All mixed up in disturbing crimes, these characters don’t always endear themselves to viewers. The actress, however, savors the challenge of deciphering perplexing behavior.

“I don’t know what people want out of something they’re watching, besides the baseline of being entertained,” Olsen says. “But I do think we want to watch people fail and see how they resolve whatever the failure is. I think we want to watch people make decisions we think we’d never make because it’s like trying to watch someone work themselves out of a puzzle.”

Glatter thought to cast Olsen because of her performance in “Martha,” which the director says left her “gobsmacked.” Olsen was unknown at the time outside of being a younger sister to child stars Mary-Kate and Ashley, who in the past had looped her into their on-screen antics, including a 1994 music video in which they implored a forlorn-looking little Lizzie to “B-U-T-T out” of their business. In a way, she did; Olsen opted out of acting as a child and trained as a young adult at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

While Olsen always wanted to act — the desire is “so embedded in every memory I have,” she says — insecurities got the best of her early on. It wasn’t just the potential comparisons to her sisters, but growing up around so many aspiring actors in Los Angeles that convinced her that she needed to first figure out, as she recalls, “Who am I? And how am I different? And how am I unique?”

She wanted to earn her spot in the industry, and NYU — along with the affiliated Atlantic Theater Company and the Moscow Art Theatre School, where she spent a semester — helped her get there.

“Martha,” in which the title character readjusts to life with her family after fleeing an abusive cult, was one of two projects Olsen starred in at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. (The other was the psychological horror film “Silent House.”) Filmmaker Sean Durkin recalls auditioning “hundreds of people” in search of an actress who could convey discomposure alongside “quiet survival and strength.”

When Olsen came in to read, “there was something in her first take, even,” Durkin says. “It was instant. There was a presence, a vulnerability, an openness and a weight to her.”

Sarah Paulson, who played Martha’s estranged sister, says Olsen made her nervous on set, the way you feel “when you’re in the presence of something that’s about to explode.” Dialogue is sparse throughout the film, which relies heavily on its cast physically relaying emotion. Paulson was struck early on by Olsen’s ability “to have every single thing inside of her come out through those orbs we call eyeballs on her face,” a clear movie-star quality.

She likens the experience to working with Lupita Nyong’o on her debut, “12 Years a Slave.”

“I’ve been lucky in that I’ve had these two very unique experiences … where I’ve had a front-row seat to the moment before they belonged to the masses, before anyone had ever experienced the power of them,” Paulson says. She describes Olsen as “endlessly watchable.”
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May 08 2023
Interview: Elizabeth Olsen Isn’t Here to Judge Anyone, Including Her Characters

The Love & Death star talks taking on the story of Candy Montgomery.

HARPER’S BAZAAREElizabeth Olsen doesn’t like true-crime stories, nor was she looking to star in another show on the heels of the critical success of WandaVision and Sorry for Your Loss. But when the Emmy-winning writer and producer David E. Kelley approached her about playing Candace “Candy” Montgomery, the suburban Texas housewife who was accused (but never convicted) of the brutal axe murder of her neighbor Betty Gore in 1980, Olsen found herself unable to turn down an opportunity to re-examine a case that had been ripped from the headlines.

“The thing that I found interesting about [Love & Death] was this portrait of a woman who didn’t feel like someone who was diagnosable, like [with] multiple personality disorder,” Olsen tells BAZAAR.com on a recent video call from New York City. “It was someone who was put in such absurd circumstances. What are all the steps that led to the decision making that happened and for the decision making to have gone so wrong? What happens in someone’s life that leads to that? So it’s not so much about the sensationalizing of a murder, but it was more a character study that I thought could be interesting.”

Created by Kelley and directed by Lesli Linka Glatter (Twin Peaks, Mad Men, Homeland), the seven-part HBO Max series, which premieres today, stars Olsen as Candy; Lily Rabe as Betty; Patrick Fugit as Candy’s husband, Pat; and Jesse Plemons as Betty’s husband, Allan, whose 10-month affair with Candy preceded his wife’s demise. Following a 1990 made-for-TV movie starring Barbara Hershey and a recent five-part Hulu series starring Jessica Biel (which Olsen has yet to watch), Love & Death is just the latest project to revisit this true story, which Olsen feels is “stranger than fiction.”

Below, Olsen discusses the research and preparation that went into her portrayal of Candy, her attraction to playing characters that make morally questionable decisions, and her future as Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch in the MCU.

You used John Bloom and Jim Atkinson’s book, Evidence of Love, as a guide to fill in any gaps in the story for your portrayal of Candy. How did your research inform your approach to the character, and what was the essence that you wanted to capture about Candy and the women of that era?
What I learned most about Candy from that book was just an insight [into] a state of mind of emotional intelligence and youth. I found the letters that she wrote to Pat when they were courting each other. It was all very pure. [There was] an idealized way to communicate with someone you think you’re supposed to love in order to fulfill the dreams that you have. She also read a lot of airport romance novels. So I think those were really informative of someone’s expectations of themselves and others and what they want to project out to the world.

And just basic things like trying to figure out how she talks, because I don’t have a recording of her voice. [With] someone who’s moved around so much, there’s still ways to have regional qualities of speech, depending on how much time you’ve spent and where. She’s moved around all over, including France. I thought of her as someone who thinks of herself as this well-traveled woman because of being an army brat. There are elements like that where we were like, “Oh, and she would have this kind of top, because it’s a little bit elevated from what most people would normally wear.” Things like that just made her feel like she had a step up in the world—that was really all about the illusion of projecting some sort of idealism.

Given that there were two women involved in this crime and only one lived to tell her side of the story, how did you all come to an agreement of what you wanted to portray as the truth?
My job was to tell what her truth was that she presented and allow for space for there to potentially be another truth. In performance, there are opportunities to maybe create a window into “Maybe there’s another truth besides the one that I’m telling.” But ultimately, it wasn’t a conversation I had with David or with Lesli. The only thing I can compare it to, really, is in Martha Marcy May Marlene, I never really talked to [writer and director] Sean Durkin about what he perceived to be the truth or the reality. All I was thinking about was my reality, and we realized while we were doing press for that movie that he never actually told me what he thinks about the ending, and I never asked because in my mind it doesn’t matter.

I think what’s interesting is sometimes when you have characters, there’s a truth that I decide about the character, and then there’s a truth that the director decides about the world, and sometimes those [truths] not being aligned could create an illusion of tension that could be interesting—or there could just be confusion. But whether or not Lesli thinks she’s just a liar, I don’t know.

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May 08 2023
Interview/Gallery: It Was Elizabeth Olsen All Along! How She Struck Marvel Magic and Cemented Wanda as the MCU’s Most Powerful Character


 

 

VARIETY: Elizabeth Olsen is one of creative leaders honored for Variety’s 2022 Power of Women presented by Lifetime. To read about her work with the Rape Foundation and Stuart House, click here.

When audiences last saw Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff in Disney’s May box office juggernaut “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” it certainly looked like Olsen’s time in the Marvel Cinematic Universe was over. Definitively, actually: An entire castle collapsed on Wanda, a building brought down by her own powerful magic after she sacrificed herself to destroy the Darkhold — the evil book that had corrupted her, turning her into a nearly unbeatable villain for most of the movie.

For Olsen, 33, who burst into the movie world with 2011’s Sundance Film Festival sensation “Martha Marcy May Marlene” — and saw her profile skyrocket as Wanda (aka the Scarlet Witch) in six Marvel movies, starting with a mid-credits cameo in 2014’s “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” and later the hit 2021 Disney+ TV series “WandaVision” — the character’s heel-turn into darkness took some adjustment. “Well, this is quite a leap from the woman that I’ve been playing!” she remembers thinking after learning she was to go malevolent in the Sam Raimi-directed sequel to “Doctor Strange.”

But she got into it. “At least in my experience, it’s been hard as a woman to express rage,” Olsen says. “It’s one of the most amazing feelings, because it’s so specific: You can know exactly why you’re angry.”

Over a long lunch on an unbearably hot September day near her home in Los Angeles, Olsen — who radiates tranquility — doesn’t disclose what makes her feel rage. “Oh, those are fun secrets to keep,” she says with a smile. “But I do have rage. I feel like the moment you, as an actor, reveal things about yourself that are kind of your ‘fuel,’ for lack of a better word, then your fuel’s exposed and it means less.”

In her years in the MCU, Olsen’s Wanda has lost her parents, her brother, her husband and her two sons, all of whom exist somewhere in the multiverse. She’s got a lot to be angry about. According to Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studios, Olsen’s skills are why Wanda’s arc has been so complex. “We only even would have dared attempt something like ‘WandaVision,’” Feige says, “because Lizzie is such an outstanding actor.”
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September 28 2022
Press: Elizabeth Olsen to Be Honored at Variety’s Power of Women Event

VARIETY: Variety is pleased to announce the honorees for its upcoming Power of Women issue and event on Wednesday, Sept. 28. The event, in partnership with Lifetime, celebrates the Power of Women honorees, who will appear on the cover of the issue, as well as the women profiled in the publication’s annual Women’s Impact Report, which highlights the top women working in entertainment.

This year’s honorees include Hillary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton, who will be speaking about the importance of celebrating women and sharing their stories, as they do in their eight-part Apple TV+ documentary series “Gutsy,” which premiered on Sept. 9; Oprah Winfrey and Ava DuVernay, who will highlight the importance of hiring female directors as they did throughout the production of “Queen Sugar” currently airing it’s seventh and final season on OWN; Extracurricular Productions president and the world’s youngest Nobel laureate Malala, who will be speaking about young people in film and television and supporting the Pillars Artist Fellowship; and award-winning actress, producer, and star of Marvel’s WandaVision and this summer’s blockbuster “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”, Elizabeth Olsen, who will be speaking about her support of the The Rape Foundation/ Stuart House. The program will be hosted by Megan Stalter, the breakout star of “Hacks”.

Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex, was chosen as one of one of this year’s stellar honorees. The Duchess’ cover will be postponed to a later date, out of respect for the recent passing of Queen Elizabeth II. Similarly, she will not attend the Power of Women event in Los Angeles later this month.

As part of the evening, Lifetime will debut this year’s Stop Breast Cancer for Life PSA, featuring music icon Patti LaBelle in support of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. The PSA spotlights the statistic that Black women are 41% more likely to die from breast cancer than any other group and urges all women to get their mammograms as early detection helps save lives.

As a Premiere Partner, Google will present the Social Impact Award to Jacqueline Martinez Garcel for the impact she has made as the CEO of the Latino Community Foundation, an independent statewide foundation with a mission to invest in Latino leaders throughout California.

“We’re excited to once again put the Power of Women spotlight on groundbreaking and accomplished female leaders,” said Variety’s co-editor-in-chief Cynthia Littleton. “We’re honored to salute those who are making a difference for equity, inclusion and excellence in our industry and making an enormous difference in the wider world through their philanthropic efforts. We’re grateful to Lifetime for their unwavering support of this franchise that is a labor of love for everyone at Variety. This year’s gathering under the stars at the Wallis promises to be another can’t-miss night.”

“We are honored to continue our partnership with Variety to showcase these incredible women that continue to entertain us, enlighten us and empower us,” said Amy Winter, EVP and head of programming, Lifetime & LMN.

Premier sponsors include Google and DIRECTV. The official sponsor is City National Bank.

Exclusive, curated gift bags will be given to honorees and guests at the event with entertainment, beauty, health and fashion products from companies including DOG PPL, Sunday Riley, Ouai and Goop. Additionally, Variety‘s 2022 Women’s Impact Report Honorees will be gifted a custom bracelet courtesy of Kendra Scott.

September 16 2022