Scarlett spins a web of wait and see
Speculation grows for “Black Widow” spinoff in future for Johansson
LOS ANGELES – As “Avengers: Endgame” closes in on its finale (in theaters Friday), Black Widow is just getting started. ❚ Scarlett Johansson, who has played the Russian spy since launching the character in “Iron Man 2” in 2010, laughs whenever a question is posed on the long-awaited “Black Widow” spinoff, which many have speculated will go into production this year. ❚ The 34-year-old actress starts and stops a couple of times before finally blurting out: “I don’t even think I can say a single thing! And that makes my job easier and harder at the same time.”
Wait, Johansson can’t even say how she feels about the idea of Black Widow finally getting her own film? Or if she’s ramping up workouts to prepare? “No, I can’t!” she says, fully under the scrutiny of a Disney representative sitting on the floor behind her. “Really.”
Johansson, along with Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man), Chris Evans (Captain America), Mark Ruffalo (Hulk), Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye) and Chris Hemsworth (Thor), is one of the O.G. Avengers, having arrived in the Marvel Cinematic Universe way before the new kids such as Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) and Captain Marvel (Brie Larson).
“It’s been a very transformative decade,” says Johansson. “When my character started in ‘Iron Man 2,’ she was like a souped-up secretary with a skill set on the side.”
Indeed, her character has weathered the best and worst of Marvel, including blatant sexism: “Avengers: Endgame” co-director Joe Russo found a “disturbing” lack of Black Widow toys available for kids around 2015’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” and consequently she was included in the first action-figure wave for 2016’s “Captain America: Civil War.”
Experts are surprised it’s taken so long for Johansson, who drove the 2014 film “Lucy” to $463.4 million worldwide at the box office, to be granted a Marvel spinoff. But while her Widow waited, “female superheroes have evolved into being far more than just a pretty face or a hypersexualized presence,” says Karie Bible, box office analyst for Exhibitor Relations. “Times have changed and these movies are changing with them.”
Johansson agrees the MCU has evolved.
“I look around today at the universe and how diverse it is and the fact that the audience and the fans drove the studios in general, not just Marvel, to represent what was going on in the zeitgeist. And that they wanted to look up on the screen and see stories and fully developed characters that represented how they felt and what they wanted to aspire to. It’s really impactful.”
A lot has changed for Johansson in real life since she became a superhero. Five years ago, she welcomed her first child, a daughter named Rose Dorothy, with ex-husband Romain Dauriac. (She’s dating “Saturday Night Live” star Colin Jost.)
Alas, Black Widow isn’t the No. 1 toy in her household. “My daughter loves fairy-tale things,” she says. “She loves girl things, princess stuff. And I love it, too! I love all the Disney princesses from back in the day. Now they’re much more empowered than some of the older, classic ones.”
Along her superhero trajectory, she’s also suffered some cultural missteps: Outcries of whitewashing arose after she starred in the Japanese manga adaptation “Ghost in the Shell” in 2017, and criticism from the LGBTQ community drove Johansson to drop out of playing a trans character just last year in the movie “Rub & Tug.”
But she also has become a vocal member of the Time’s Up initiative in Hollywood and has earned a no-nonsense reputation. In a sense, on-screen or off, you don’t mess with the woman the media has dubbed ScarJo.
Ahead of “Endgame,” Johansson exudes the confidence of feeling “more like I belong here. I’ve worked to get here,” she says. “I can stand among my cast and crew and feel like I have a decade of work under my belt and it’s meaningful. I didn’t start that way on ‘Iron Man 2.’
“I didn’t know how the audience was going to respond to my take on the character – it was a beloved character forever and I felt like it was huge shoes to fill. I feel like Black Widow is mine.”
OK, so back to the “Black Widow” spinoff. Johansson obviously won’t comment on casting rumors for a movie she can’t confirm is being made (cough, Rachel Weisz and “Stranger Things” star David Harbour, cough). She does “love” Harbour’s Netflix show, for the record.
Similarly, she won’t get near salary negotiations for a movie she’s not allowed to confirm, but for Johansson, parity was a strategy from the start.
“I feel very fortunate to be able to say this, but I fought that battle really early on, and set a precedent for myself in my career and just stuck to it really strongly,” she says, noting that her manager mom insisted upon parity since she was a child actor.
“Now I even have, like, surpassed my male co-stars,” she says with a chuckle. “But I have my mom to thank for really pushing that, being like, ‘It’s about screen time. You guys are both leads (and should be paid equally).’ It was never even a male/female thing.”