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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Gallery: “WandaVision” Episodes 1.01-1.02 Screencaps and Magazine Scans

Enjoy these UHD screencaps from the first two episodes. I love this show!

 

January 17 2021
Press: A Thorough Breakdown of All the Marvel Easter Eggs on WandaVision

 
Marvel Easter Eggs in WandaVision Episode 1

  • When Wanda accidentally smashes a plate into Vision’s head, he jokes about his wife and her “flying saucers,” and she comments back about his “indestructible head.” Considering that Vision died after having the Mind Stone ripped from his head, it’s a dark joke to kick off the series.
  • Vision’s work tie has a visual reference to his comic-book alter ego! In Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta’s Vision, whenever the character dresses as a human, he wears a tie clip that emulates the diamond pattern on his chest.
  • Vision’s boss, Mr. Hart, is likely named after comic creator Steve Englehart, who created 1985’s The Vision and the Scarlet Witch with Richard Howell, a miniseries that heavily influenced WandaVision.
  • It’s been heavily implied that Kathryn Hahn’s Agnes is the MCU’s Agatha Harkness, a witch who helped train Wanda’s magic back in the ’70s and ’80s.
  • When Wanda magically saves dinner, the bottle of wine she pours from is Maison du Mépris, which translates to house of contempt or scorn. As fans have pointed out since the trailer drop, this seems like a reference to the House of M comics storyline in which Wanda bends reality into a new world ruled by her family.
  • The Stark commercial break refers to two things: Avengers icon Tony Stark and his part in Wanda’s dark past. As Wanda and her twin brother, Pietro, explain in Avengers: Age of Ultron, their parents were killed by an explosive Stark Industries device, leaving the twins trapped under rubble. The Maximoffs were trapped by a Stark Industries shell for two days, expecting it to detonate before they get rescued. Even though Wanda eventually fights beside Tony in the future, there’s still some trauma from that experience and her brother’s death. If it weren’t for the Starks, Wanda could have been a completely different person.
  • The episode closes with a mysterious observer watching the “show” and taking notes on a pad with the logo of S.W.O.R.D. on the cover. For those who don’t know, S.W.O.R.D stands for Sentient World Observation and Response Department and is a subdivision of S.H.I.E.L.D. It’s a counterterrorism and intelligence agency that deals with extraterrestrial threats to world security. Expect to see them around more.

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January 17 2021
Press: How ‘WandaVision’ Star Elizabeth Olsen Transformed Her Performance For Every Genre-Bending Episode

 

VARIETY: Elizabeth Olsen’s big-screen portrayal of Marvel’s Scarlett Witch led the franchise’s foray onto Disney Plus with the actor’s starring role for the small-screen series “WandaVision.”

The spinoff sees Olsen reprising her character alongside Paul Bettany’s Vision, as the duo is seemingly stuck inside various classic sitcoms, seemingly unaware as to how they got there or why. Each episode jumps into a new decade stuffed with sitcom-centric characters, clothes and gags. But the real treat is how Olsen seamlessly leaps from Mary Tyler Moore housewife to “Brady Bunch” channeling lead.

Here, Variety talks with Olsen to breakdown her process of decade leaping acting, and uncover everything she learned at the “sitcom bootcamp.”

How soon after shooting ‘Endgame’ did Marvel reveal they wanted to make a TV show about Wanda and Vision?

“Infinity War” had just come out and we were picking up what we didn’t film for “Endgame” because filmed them at the same time. I was in LA and Kevin Feige asked me to come in for a meeting. He and Louis D’Esposito let me know that Disney Plus was launching — and they’re giving Marvel the opportunity to bring some of the MCU onto the streaming service. That kind of freaked me out because I’m so used to these characters being on huge group experiences. To think about these characters being morphed to a small TV screen kind of freaked me out, because they’re larger than life characters; they’re superheroes. So that was intimidating, but that’s when Kevin told me his nucleus of the idea [for “WandaVision”]. They wanted to tell the story of Wanda and Vision living in the suburbs, through the guise of American sitcoms and have this “Twilight Zone-y” aspect to it. I thought that was awesome. I was excited by that and intimidated. I’m used to being able to dissolve into an ensemble in these movies. It’s kind of scary to step up in that way, but most things that are scary are worth it.

I understand that you went through a kind of sitcom boot camp prior to shooting, what specific things did you pick up doing that?

We really tried to make everything very era-specific. For me [it was about] just trusting the hair; the makeup; the costumes; Jess Hall, our [director of photography], with his lenses and his lighting. I was responsible for my voice, my diction, my posture and moving through space. It’s all the geeky things like, what part of your voice are women speaking from? What is the rhythm and the pattern and the diction of the language of speech? It’s getting into that mode, which isn’t specific to the time it’s specific to the sitcoms of the time. Which was really fun, because it’s not a grounded thing. It’s something that you’re kind of allowing yourself to send up, which you feels wrong as an actor, but feel so good.

What was the difference between what you did the ’50s, versus when you were in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s?

The ’70s women were allowed — it was almost like there is was a relaxation of women and social behavior, and so that would affect their voices and the tone that they can take. Instead of it being kind of a higher and level [like in the ’50s]. The ’70s, even though it’s this really strange “Brady Bunch” aspirational time in sitcom land, women were able to have a bit more control, something that grounded them a bit more in their voice. Then as we got into the ’80s, there were the teachable moments, and how sincere everything was, that was really funny. And then as we move into the arts and into the ’00s and the 2010s, the sitcom becomes really cynical. The humor, like “Malcolm in the Middle” and “Modern Family” becomes incredibly cynical. And that’s what we found comforting for whatever reason as a society.

It was fun when we were in this boot camp to not only chart the physical changes, as tools, but to also [discover] what comedy was for that time. “Rosemary’s Baby” is a film and “Brady Bunch” is on television, it doesn’t make any sense to me. But for whatever reason, that’s what that’s what the consumer was watching at home.

How do you keep a hold on who Wanda is with such a wide range of experience of literal places that she’s in and the story she’s telling?

You just trust the writing. This character — her core, central life is the life experience we’ve watched her have through the films. It’s a lot of trauma, processing and resenting of her own abilities and her powers. We’re just putting a shade or cloth over that. [“WandaVision”] is her trying to not be found out in the suburbs, but she’s also in a sitcom. So she’s playing the part as best she can, as well. It’s not the exact, same thread from Ultron. This woman is doing the best she can in this sitcom.

The thing that was fun for me as an actor in the show was when the sitcom and what we know of the MCU [came together] — the tension that’s pulled between the two of them. You’re just kind of peeling away and revealing bits, but you’re not revealing everything. Living in that tension throughout this whole series was my playground.

This shows Wanda in a way that she never was in the movies. And for the first time, she’s being written largely by women, how has that affected the character?

This whole show feels very female. And in a really guttural, pelvic floor way. I told Kathryn [Hahn] that she was the pelvic floor of our show. Because she’s just such a solid person in who she is and what she brings. I do feel that in our show and in the way we tell our story.

I don’t want to take away from all the men that were on our show, but we did have this very feminine energy of large collaboration, large teamwork, lots of dialogue, lots of open communication, lots of feedback. Which I think, generally speaking, one would say maybe is more feminine and masculine, which is a complete generalization [and] I know that.

But that was the tone of our show. And that is how we always worked through our days and how we worked through a year of working. It was 110 days of a shoot, I think. We always had that open communication dialogue from the from the boot camp until our last days on set to even in post-production.

“WandaVision” streams new episodes Fridays on Disney Plus.

January 17 2021
Press/Video: Elizabeth Olsen Confirms that Wanda Still Has a Sokovian Accent (& Explains Why You Don’t Hear It)

 

COLLIDER: When we first met Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff in Avengers: Age of Ultron (after the Captain America: The Winter Soldier tease), she had a pretty heavy Sokovian accent. After all, Wanda and her twin brother Pietro (Aaron Taylor Johnson) grew up there. However, when we reunite with the character in Avengers: Infinity War, that accent is gone!

While making the press rounds for Infinity War back in 2018, Wanda’s vanishing accent was a mighty hot topic of conversation with Joe and Anthony Russo explaining that they intentionally stripped Wanda of her accent for two main reasons:

“One is you’ll notice at the beginning of Civil War that Black Widow is training her to be a spy, and two is she’s been on the run, and one of the most distinguishing characteristics that she has is her accent.”

That reasoning does make enough sense, but because most of Wanda’s scenes in Infinity War are just with Vision (Paul Bettany), one could assume what they really meant was, “We just decided to ditch it!” But, on a recent episode of Collider Ladies Night, Olsen actually confirmed that that’s not the case at all. Wanda’s accent disappeared with purpose and also – it’s not totally gone. Here’s how she put it:

“So, the Sokovia accent was created by me and Aaron and our dialect coach because it’s a fake country and we could find different sources of Slavic sounds. And we wanted to make sure it didn’t sound Russian because Black Widow speaks Russian, and so we just needed to sound more like Slovakian. So we created these sound changes that worked for Aaron’s British accent going to Slovakia basically and my American accent so that we sounded related. And then all of a sudden, all these different characters had to speak it in different films. [Laughs] So the Sokovian accent took a lot of time. It hasn’t gone anywhere. There have been reasons for everything. It lightened up when she started living in the States, and in WandaVision she is playing the role of being in an American sitcom and so it’s not gone. It is absolutely still there.”

Does this mean we could see (hear?) the return of Wanda’s Sokovian accent? This tease from Olsen is making me think that’s it’s a real possibility! Olsen did also tell us that Wanda is essentially a blank slate at the beginning of WandaVision and that “the show is what starts to inform the characters of other things as it keeps going.” Maybe one of those “other things” will be her Sokovian accent.

 

January 17 2021
Press: WandaVision Is Marvel’s Chance to Finally Do Right by Scarlet Witch

POPSUGAR: Wanda Maximoff entered the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron as one half of a powerful brother-sister duo bent on causing chaos. Unlike her mutant counterpart, Wanda wasn’t born (or turned into via experiments if we’re going by the retcon) a mutant with the ability to warp reality. Instead, she and her twin brother Pietro (aka Quicksilver) gained their abilities by volunteering as test subjects in Hydra experiments to create supersoldiers. The two were exposed to the Mind Stone, which granted Wanda telekinetic and telepathic abilities. Instead of being the formidable mutant she was introduced as, Wanda was now an “enhanced human,” and her powers suffered a corresponding demotion.

This isn’t to say that the MCU’s Wanda is a docile damsel — she’s grown a bit since her debut. With every appearance, her powers have come to somewhat resemble the chaos magic she’s known for in the comics. After losing her brother in Age of Ultron, she joins the Avengers and learns energy manipulation, allowing her to create force fields and bolts of energy. By Infinity War, it’s obvious that she’s powerful, but the hows and whys are never really defined. She’s the only person capable of destroying the Mind Stone in Vision’s forehead and does so while holding Thanos back — a feat that literally no one else can accomplish in any of the films until Captain Marvel appears in Endgame. So it would be quite fair to say that Marvel recognizes Wanda as a force of nature, but they haven’t given her the time she deserves to delve into her abilities. That’s mainly been given to the big three: Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, and Thor Odinson (and it says something that it took 11 years into the franchise to make a female-led film, but that’s another story).

MCU’s Wanda has always been a character full of potential that’s been on the sidelines as her story gets told through the eyes of everyone else around her. But now, the Disney+ series WandaVision is meant to explore Wanda’s past and the full capabilities of her telekinetic powers post-Endgame, as well as serve as a lead-in to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which Elizabeth Olsen will also star in. Every look we’ve gotten at the six-episode limited series has hinted at a dizzying mindf*ck of epic proportions that mixes comic lore with every college Psychology course you’ve ever taken as a freshman. And I don’t mean that in a bad way! It feels like Marvel is finally taking the time to delve into the mind of one of its most powerful Avengers, and it’s using some of the biggest stories of her comic run to do so.

For any comic book reader, it’s clear that the show draws from “The Vision and the Scarlet Witch” and the infamous “House of M” storyline in which Scarlet Witch suffers a mental breakdown and tries to alter the fabric of reality to recreate her lost children. A lot of the story won’t apply to Wanda since she doesn’t have children (yet), but the idea of her altering reality explains the sitcom setting of WandaVision. It means that the MCU will align Wanda’s abilities more closely to her mutant counterpart, giving her a powerful boost in the franchise and hinting that she may be the catalyst to the introduction of the X-Men. (Which is ironic considering that “House of M” ends in the decimation of mutants.) It also implies that WandaVision will be exploring Wanda’s psyche and mental health, an aspect that the movie franchise has glossed over a few times.
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January 15 2021
Press/Video: “WandaVision”- Elizabeth Olsen On Scarlet Witch’s Family and Evolution

COMICBOOK.COM: WandaVision is going to take a deeper look at its titular characters, Wanda Maximoff and The Vision, than the Marvel Cinematic Universe has done to this point. The characters have appeared in Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, and one went on for Avengers: Endgame. Despite so many appearances by Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany in these roles, audiences have barely “scratched the surface” on these characters according to WandaVision director Matt Shakman. Now, Olsen has opened up about what some extra time with and evolution of Wanda Maximoff will mean for the Marvel character.

“I know what it means,” Olsen told Comicbook.com in the interview seen in the video above, responding to what it means for Wanda to become a full-on Scarlet Witch. “I do think it is, it’s almost like it’s when I say coming of age story for her, it’s more like coming up of a woman age story. Like you know, you start to come to terms with your past and who you are and take accountability for things and kind of coming to terms with yourself. I’ll say.”

Wanda’s lineage in Marvel Comics adds more importance to her in the Marvel Universe, in addition to being a powerful and integral character on her own. In the books, she is the daughter of X-Men legend Magneto and sister to Quicksilver, with only one of those relationships ringing true in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so far. As for whether or not those family ties will become an issue, “I don’t know,” Olsen says, simply.

Still, family is definitely going to be an issue for Wanda, as the character will be welcoming her own children to the world in WandaVision. “I think as much as I can understand parenting you would do anything to protect your family and your children,” Olsen says. “I think what it does bring up for her is this reflection of her own experiences from when she was a child and her you know, throughout her family.” It’s a “tough background,” as Olsen calls it, one which has seen Wanda Maximoff lose just about everyone she as loved throughout her MCU tenure (her parents, her brother, her Vision).

Not only did Olsen channel the evolution of Wanda’s tragic story, she also had to do so under a guise of existing in a sitcom which pays honest homage to different eras of such television shows. “It was so nerve-racking and there was a lot of adrenaline, a lot of quick changes, and it totally confused my brain,” Olsen said of shooting in front of a live audience. “I was really grateful when we added the fourth wall!” It took her a minute to understand how to not perform for the audience but feed off of their energy. “I think it was an amalgamation of Mary Tyler Moore and Elizabeth Montgomery and I think I threw in some Lucy in the 70s because there was a good bit of physical comedy.”

Are you excited for WandaVision? Share your thoughts in the comment section or send them my way on Instagram!

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WandaVision premieres its first two episodes on Disney+ this Friday.

January 13 2021
Press: Kevin Feige Hints at a ‘Full House’ Homage on ‘WandaVision’ and Everything Else We Learned About the Marvel Series

VARIETY: ‘WandaVision,’ created by Jac Schaeffer and starring returning Avengers Paul Bettany (Vision) and Elizabeth Olsen (Wanda Maximoff), is by far the strangest addition to the MCU. Warning, spoilers ahead for the new series.

Debuting on Jan. 15 on Disney Plus, this “Twilight Zone” channeling mini-series jumps from decade to decade, with the stars seemingly trapped inside their own (period-appropriate) sitcoms. Each episode is a new decade, and a new collection of TV tropes for audiences to wade through.

In a press conference on Sunday moderated by Jaleel White of “Family Matters” fame, a perfect nod to the many great sitcoms of the past “WandaVision” took inspiration from, the show’s stars and creators answered burning questions, including how Hydra factors into the show and which sitcoms were used for inspiration. Schaeffer, Bettany, Olsen, director Matt Shakman, Kathryn Hahn, Teyonah Parris and President of Marvel Studios Kevin Feige were all in attendance. Read on to find out everything we know so far about the series.

‘WandaVision’ was taped in front of a live studio audience

To add that authentic sitcom feel, the first episode of “WandaVision” (set in the 1950s) was filmed in front of a live studio audience. Though it used to be the norm back in the day — as White pointed out, every episode of “Family Matters” was taped live — the method took Olsen a little getting used to. “It was so nerve-wracking,” Olsen said. “There was a lot of adrenaline, there were a lot of quick changes, and it totally confused my brain… The idea of not playing to an audience, but feeding off an audience and having a camera. I was really grateful when we added the fourth wall.”

Meeting with Dick Van Dyke and sitcom boot camp

In order to remain as authentic as possible, director Shakman and Feige met with sitcom great Dick Van Dyke, who shared his wisdom. “I remember Kevin and I had this amazing lunch with Dick Van Dyke that remains one of the great afternoons of my life. And we asked him, ‘What was the governing principle behind ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’? Why did it work so well?’ And he said, ‘If it couldn’t happen in real life, it can’t happen on the show,’” Shakman said.

Other aspects of production were also important to the show’s authenticity, such as the production design, cinematography and costumes. But more than anything, Shakman said that he and the cast did research by watching as many sitcoms as they could throughout the decades.

“We watched a ton of old television episodes and talked about how comedy changes because it really does. The approach to comedy in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s is really different. And as Lizzie said, doing it in front of this live studio audience, which is this quasi-theater-TV thing, it really adds to it,” Shakman said. “Lucille Ball, ‘I Love Lucy,’ Dick Van Dyke – you can feel the energy of that theatrical performance, working with the audience. And then when you get into ’60s shows like “Bewitched” or “I Dream of Jeannie,” it is a fourth wall and all of a sudden, it’s more like doing a movie these days and the laugh track is canned and brought in, which changes the energy, the approach, the style, everything.”

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January 11 2021