ANGELINA JOLIE
THENA
As this is your first superhero movie, what was it that drew you in?
Honestly, like a lot of parents and people that just enjoy a fun experience at the movies, I’ve been watching the Marvel films for a long time with my family, and watching them evolve. We really did love Black Panther in my house.
How do you train for Thena’s power of manifesting weapons?
I knew she had the staff with the crescent, because they had to do that, because that’s from the comics. When I was first training, rhey’d make a list of multiple [weapons], and I kept thinking that they were not very focused. As it got closer, I realised that it was going to be a bit of almost everything. But it’s a funny thing to coordinate a fight if you’re sticking somebody with one thing, and then you can quickly make a sword into a spear. It was fun.
Is it true you did a lot of ballet training to get used to the movements?
I did. Maybe because I’ve done a lot of these action-type films. I think there often is an instinct in your mind to think, ‘To be a strong woman, I’m going to mirror a fight of a male energy.’ Which I’ve done, when I’ve done action films. And I kind of felt like to be fully in my strength, and to be this particular woman, I would go to what is most feminine about me, and the softer, longer, lighter side of the female body. I wanted her to be very feminine, and fight from that place.
Chloé encouraged the actors to bring aspects of themselves to their characters...
She developed them [that way] – or we’d been cast with that in mind, and then it developed further. And we felt very much who we were playing. It was much more emotional and personal than I certainly had anticipated coming in.
This film could be a game-changer in terms of representation on screen…
I think a good thing about this film is, it’s not diversity for the sake of diversity. Part of the original idea is, if you’re going to have Eternals and they’re going to blend into the Earth across the globe, they have to be of the globe. And still we have places we need to go, that are unexplored. But it certainly just felt right.
Is the door left open for you to revisit Thena in future, and explore this world more?
I don’t think I can say that. Good try, though! [laughs] MM
out five years earlier, the resulting surge in energy kicked off ‘the emergence’, which seemingly finds the Deviants back on the prowl. Time for the Eternals to stage a reunion. Because the threat levels here are big, even in comparison to Thanos’ fingersnapping genocide. “After Thanos, it does make you think, ‘What else?’” says Zhao. “Again, what excited me is the idea of going back in time, and exploring [the time] before Thanos was born, before anyone was born. Where does the MCU go back in time? And that brings us to the mythology of the Celestials. Anything involving the Celestials is going to be at a hugescale level of complication, let’s put it that way.”
The film will answer the question of why this group of Earth’s so-called protectors didn’t step in as Thanos was amassing Infinity Stones. “[The audience] will understand why,” assures Zhao, “and not only why, but how complicated not interfering made them feel. We explore that. You’ll see that in the film. The Eternals were instructed not to interfere with any human conflict unless Deviants are involved. There’s a reason why that’s the case. And that was the instruction from the prime Celestial Arishem.”
When it came to assembling the ensemble that forms this 10-strong family of unbelievably powerful aliens, Zhao and her team were looking for “unique individuals”. They ended up with one of the most varied and impressive lineups yet seen in a superhero movie, or any blockbuster for that matter, with several characters heavily revised from their comic-book incarnations.
Kevin Feige has previously said, “If there was a lead in this ensemble, it is Sersi, it is Gemma Chan”. Chan actually has Marvel previous, having played Minn-Erva in Captain Marvel. “The characters in the films couldn’t really be more different,” Chan tells TF over Zoom. “It was a nice surprise to be asked back.” It probably helped that Minn-Erva was killed off (and that the role saw Chan smothered in blue make-up). Chan understands the protagonist comment “because she is the one that has this real connection to human beings, because she is living amongst them – she’s kind of the audience’s way in, I suppose. So it made sense to me, in that way, that she’s your window into relating to these beings.” Chan sees the Eternals as “kind of like a big, slightly dysfunctional family”.
At the head of the family is leader Ajak, played by Salma Hayek. “Chloé decided to take on the concept of leadership from the perspective of motherhood,” says Hayek, a blast of unfiltered energy over Zoom. “I’m not a mother. I’m an alien. I can’t have kids. However, my character used to be a man in the comics, now it’s a woman. So instead of just changing the gender, I proposed to [Zhao] to really bring something that is very specific from womanhood.” Ajak is the mama bear of the group, and that influences her every interaction. “I need to guide them into things,” she explains. “We have a mission in life,
‘I FELT THAT ETERNALS IS GOING TO BE AN MCU MOVIE LIKE NO OTHER’ DON LEE
in the world. A mother also needs to guide her kids. When they misbehave, she will reprimand them, but always from the perspective of motherhood… There’s an empathy to it – although I’m not allowed to have empathy, because I’m an alien. So that makes it interesting.”
Angelina Jolie makes her superhero debut as warrior Thena in Eternals (she previously appeared in comic-book movie Wanted, but as she says with a laugh, “it wasn’t super”). “Really, it was this particular family of Marvel I wanted to join – this particular group of people, this cast,” she explains. “I really wanted to join that family. And I also was a fan of Chloé’s films. I had a faith that she would bring something special to the MCU.” As for Thena’s role in the family, Jolie is nervous about dropping spoilers. “I have to check my notes about what I’m not allowed to say,” she laughs, looking off to the side of the screen. “You know what’s funny? You read the thing that says what your character is, and you think, ‘Is it [right]? That I’m often ‘surly and aloof’! I suppose she is.”
Kumail Nanjiani’s Kingo is - in the words of the Big Sick actor - “sort of like the kid, the young boy of the group”. “He’s very excitable and full of joy, but also he’s arrogant. But he also really loves his family. I think of him as a mix of opposites, you know? He’s very sincere and sarcastic. He’s like a little kid but also has a lot of authority.” Given that the family has been on Earth for 7,000 years, there has been plenty of time for disagreements. “There’s a lot of drama, obviously,” Nanjiani says. “There are various members that aren’t excited to see one another. But he’s definitely the one who’s excited to see everybody. He’s just excited that the gang’s back together.”
Nanjiani had actually read the comics ahead of landing the role. “I knew the world really well. I knew how big, bold, cosmic and weird it was. I was really curious to see what they were going to do with the movie before they asked me if I wanted to be in it.” Although, he explains, “I haven’t wrapped my head around the movie because it’s so big.” He also famously gave his body a superhero upgrade and got ludicrously shredded for the film. “For a bunch of reasons, I thought this character should look different from the way I looked then,” he says. “They put no pressure on me [to get in shape]. It was very, very difficult, the transformation. And my wife kept being like, ‘You’ve done this to yourself. No one’s asked you to do this. Just so you know – this is your own doing.’ While I’m like, you know, eating egg whites.”
Teenage Lia McHugh is the youngest actor in the family. Though her character, Sprite, looks like a young girl, she is of course thousands of years old. “Sprite is very different from any other character in the MCU,” McHugh explains. “I would describe her as an old soul who struggles with being alive for centuries stuck in the body of a child.” As for how she fits in with the family unit, McHugh says, “Sprite is definitely the smartest of all the Eternals. She keeps everyone in check, that’s for sure!” Although, she admits to not being aware of quite what a big deal this ensemble was when she signed up. “Honestly, when I joined the cast of Eternals, I wasn’t totally aware of how high-level the rest of the cast was. I knew Angelina from Maleficent and Richard [Madden] from Cinderella!”
Druig “is obviously the coolest one out of all of them” says Barry Keoghan (Dunkirk, Calm With Horses), who plays him. “He’s like the cool cousin that
‘DRUIG IS OBVIOUSLY THE COOLEST ONE OUT OF ALL OF THEM’ BARRY KEOGHAN
everyone wants to be like. But he stands up for what he believes in. If that decision or belief he’s standing for puts him in a division with the others, he’s not afraid of that.” Less hostile is Brian Tyree Henry’s Phastos, who is reportedly the openly gay member of the group, although that has not been confirmed. “He’s one of the kindest characters I’ve ever played, which is really nice because I have a reputation for playing really tough characters,” says the Atlanta and Widows actor. “And what I like about Phastos is that he is really just love.” His brain has been useful to people of Earth over the past 7,000 years. “Phastos is the scientist of the group,” Henry adds. “I like to say he’s like the evolutionary revolutionary. Everything he does is for the advancement of humankind. So, he’s created different things over the years, like steam engines.”