Meet Domino, Zazie Beetz.
NEW YORK – After Deadpool 2, more people will know the name Zazie Beetz. But first they’ll want to learn how to say it.
“Zay-zee is pretty offensive to me,” jokes Beetz, whose name is pronounced Zah-see. “I just get nicknames very quickly: Za, Zaza, Z, Zoboomafoo. It runs the gamut.”
In Deadpool 2 (now in theaters), she plays the sardonic Domino, an alwayslucky hired gun recruited by Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) for his X-Force team to save a flame-throwing teen mutant (Julian Dennison) from breaking bad.
Looking unflappably cool as Domino dodges whizzing bullets and snaps the limbs of her adversaries, Beetz is the movie’s “captivating standout,” says USA TODAY movie critic Brian Truitt, while others on Twitter have called for the character to get her own spinoff film. (To which co-writer Paul Wernick responds: “I don’t see why not.”)
Beetz, 26, broke out in 2016 on FX’s Emmy-winning show Atlanta as Van, a mother and on-and-off girlfriend of cash-strapped rap manager Earn (Donald Glover). “I never really pictured (a superhero movie) would be my trajectory,” she says. “I was nervous, because you sign onto a franchise ... you don’t really know what you’re signing up for. But I liked the idea of introducing the live-action version of a character,” par- ticularly one as no-nonsense as Domino, who’s depicted as having chalkwhite skin and straight, chopped hair in comic books.
Reynolds and producers encouraged Beetz to wear her hair naturally for the role, which is a “wonderful opportunity to showcase my hair texture on a mainstream platform,” says the actress, who is half-black. “Black Panther got there first, but this is one of the (more prominent) depictions of just hair and a ’fro.”
Beetz trained for two months before shooting in Vancouver last summer. Things only got more intense once she slipped into Domino’s tight, “wildly impractical” leather bodysuit: She fainted during one particularly elaborate fight sequence with a truck convoy and even got burned by a stray shell casing in a shootout, which left a scar on her chest.
That level of commitment combined with charisma is what drew co-writer Rhett Reese to her immediately.
“She can really keep up with Ryan, which is not an easy task. She’s with him step by step,” Reese says.
“I just get nicknames very quickly: Za, Zaza, Z, Zoboomafoo. It runs the gamut.”
That Beetz has already been recognized on the street for Deadpool 2 is surreal to the actress, who was born in Berlin but has lived in New York most of her life. In middle school, her idea of a “superhero movie” was Charlie’s Angels.
“I was a musical/Disney girl growing up,” Beetz says. “I liked Mulan, Pocahontas, The Sound of Music, Singin’ in the Rain — I was much more in that direction than the comic book universe.”
She graduated from New York’s LaGuardia High School (from the movie Fame) with a concentration in theater before exploring other creative outlets. “But acting ended up being the most consistent thing that I stuck with.”
Although a third season of Atlanta hasn’t been announced, Beetz has plenty more films on her plate in the meantime. Among them: independent drama Sollers Point (also in theaters); Chance the Rapper horror flick Slice (expected later this year); sci-fi movie Pale Blue Dot with Natalie Portman; and a stilluntitled mystery with Armie Hammer and Dakota Johnson.
As her star rises, “my boyfriend (actor David Rysdahl) and I have been talking about what’s going to change,” she says. “People have been asking me if I can still take the subway, and I can. ... But I’m a little bit mourning that loss right now, walking around like, ‘This could be my last day not having to wear sunglasses or something.’ ”