It will come as a surprise to very few that ‘Deadpool & Wolverine‘ has dominated the box office in its opening weekend, swiftly becoming the eighth-best debut and biggest R-rated opening of all time. The long-awaited team-up of the titular duo has brought the audiences out to cinemas in their droves, but what good is a superhero film without a villain?
The vast and evergrowing landscape of the Marvel universe has permeated numerous mediums, captivating audiences worldwide. However, certain characters remain relatively underexplored in comparison to the heroes and villains that we now deem as household names. Charles Xavier’s twin sister Cassandra Nova, is a more obscure yet fascinating figure from Marvel Comics, who is finally stepped into the spotlight with ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’, helmed by Emma Corrin, perhaps known best for their performance as Princess Diana in the fourth season of ‘The Crown’.
We sat down with Corrin, who is known for their versatile acting range, to discuss the freedom and challenges that come with portraying a lesser-known character. From diving deep into Cassandra’s compelling origin story to engaging in creative conversations with director Shawn Levy and co-star Ryan Reynolds, Emma sheds light on the preparation process that comes with stepping into a well-established cinematic universe and how this experience was unique in several ways.
Exclusive Interview with Emma Corrin for Deadpool & Wolverine
We live in an age where Marvel content spans many different mediums, but there isn’t a great deal out there about Cassandra Nova compared to other characters. What was your process like in terms of preparing for this slightly more obscure character?
Emma Corrin: It gave me quite a lot of freedom to play with it. She’s got an amazing origin story that’s in the comics and that was fun to draw on, but it was mainly conversations with Shawn [Levy] and Ryan [Reynolds]. They wanted her to be a very particular kind of villain, the sort that didn’t come across quite like a villain, for the purposes of the tone in this film. There were a lot of conversations about figuring that out.
This is so vastly different from your other previous roles, but were there any elements or traits from any of those roles that surprisingly helped you bring Cassandra to life?
Emma Corrin: I always bang on about this thing that I really love, which is vulnerability as well as strength, and balancing those two things in a character. The label ‘villain’ is quite a big one, and for me, it was a matter of throwing that to the side and trying to figure out how to empathize with this character and find her vulnerability. I wanted to figure out why she is doing what she was doing, so I went back to her origin story and her relationship with her brother, which I found quite interesting.
You have said in the past that you’ve always wanted to play villain. What was it that drew you to finally play one with Cassandra?
Emma Corrin: I think it was doing something completely different that I’d never done before and then just the fun aspect of it. I felt like villains have a lot of freedom.
Ryan [Reynolds] is renowned for his sharp wit and quick improv. How did you find working with Deadpool’s quite impulsive and unpredictable nature, when you are trying to establish quite a dominating presence?
Emma Corrin: It was a lot of fun, but also quite intimidating. Improv is a terrifying word when you are someone who doesn’t have a background in comedy, but he makes you feel so at ease on set. The way he throws out things like, let’s try this or that, always feels seconded with an unsaid sentence. It’s like there are no wrong answers. There’s no wrong way to do anything. It’s a real playground.
Now that you have entered this expansive cinematic universe if you could choose to team up with any of the previous Marvel villains, who would you pick?
Emma Corrin: Oh my God, that’s a good question. He’s not a villain, but I think Cassandra and Dr. Strange would be a really cool combination. There’s something a bit off-kilter about that character that I really like.
Was there any particular X-Men film that kind of helped you prepare for this?
Emma Corrin: I look back at both Patrick Stewart and James McAvoy’s roles and what they did with them. I was kind of worried because I didn’t want it to influence my performance too much or that I would start like drawing on it a lot, but I was really interested in how they portrayed that internal world that comes with having telepathic powers. It’s all very much in the mind, as opposed to Deadpool and Wolverine, who wear their powers very outwardly. I also think that Logan is a beautiful piece of cinema and I love that film.
Finally, this film was shot in two segments due to the SAG strikes last year. Did you find that this affected your process at all?
Emma Corrin: Obviously what we achieved with the strike was incredible, and it was really interesting to see how it affected this project because they had shot a considerable amount, but I hadn’t shot anything yet when the strike happened. Ryan [Reynolds] and Shawn [Levy] talked about it earlier being this really unique experience of having this amazing chunk of time to put together and edit what they had done so far and see where they were at, what they needed, and what they had missed. It was an incredible opportunity where just before I started they were able to show me an hour of the movie, which is wild!
Obviously, you shoot so often out of order and you just have to jump in with your character. You’ll have a familiarity with the script, but you can’t see it yet. So usually there is a lot of guessing that you have to do and you are having to rely on your director and everyone around you to set the tone and tell you what is needed in that moment, because of what’s happened before or what’s about to happen. So to literally watch the film where the screen would go to black and it would say Cassandra enters here, and I was like amazing, I can totally see how that scene is gonna play. I mean, obviously the film has changed so much since then because these guys are always editing, but it was it was exciting experience.
