Evangeline Lilly on being the first female superhero in a Marvel title

Evangeline Lilly is girl power gold! Both as her character The Wasp in the all new Ant-Man and the Wasp and in real life! We had to talk to her about being the first female superhero in a Marvel film ever!

Photo Credit: Louise Manning Bishop / MomStart.com

First of all, we learned prior to our interview that Evangeline was especially thrilled to interview with our group during the Ant-Man and the Wasp press event because of the fact that that the Wasp was such a uniquely powerful female role and we too were a uniquely powerful group of women. While that may not seem like a big deal, it really is and it means the world to female journalists, writers and bloggers like myself. So, already going into this interview, we knew this would be an homage to the power of womanhood.

And it’s only fitting that we would get to be a room full of female interviewers (and one equally awesome guy interviewer) about to speak to the first female superhero to be listed in a Marvel title. It hadn’t even dawned on me before this, but even while there are a handful of female superheroes in the Marvel Universe, there had never been one listed in the movie title before Ant-Man and the Wasp. What an honor!

The (almost) All-Female Interview with Evangeline Lilly

First of all, she is a beautiful person. Of course her physical beauty is apparent, but her overall spirit is what lit up the room! She entered and upon taking a quick scan of our female-skewed interview room, exclaimed, “Oh, my God. Women! I love it. By the way, where are the men?” It was also cool to learn that her partner is the stay-at-home dad in her relationship. Which led to the topic of collaborative efforts between men and women.

Q: You did all of the heavy lifting on the action in this.

Evangeline Lilly : Well, I didn’t lift a semi truck. That was Mister Rudd. Actually, me and my team of incredible stunt women, the CGI crew, the directors — I mean, it was such a collaborative effort. We did the heavy lifting. It was really cool, that they really wanted to honor this moment where a female superhero is being titled and billed, and I think Marvel is just absolutely hell bent and passionate right now about representing women as fierce and capable and as equals to men.

Q : Talk about being a superhero. I have two little young girls, and I can’t wait to take them.

Evangeline Lilly: Amazing, amazing. I used to fantasize about being Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman. I was obsessed with her. And partly because it’s Michelle Pfeiffer in a skin-tight leather costume, owning it, and being fierce as shit. Can I say “shit” here? {fyi -she most certainly could in this room!}

But, also, I think it was because there wasn’t a lot to choose from. There just weren’t very many female superheroes. It was mostly male superheroes.

So, you know, me and my sisters would sometimes be pretending to be Spiderman or to be Batman or to be whoever else. And, you know, I had a moment recently where my seven-year old son was pretending to be The Wasp. Yeah. And I still get goose bumps when I tell that story. That’s a cultural shift, you know, for a little boy to pretend to be a female superhero, that’s like, this is no small thing.

And sometimes, I think we’re making a mountain of a molehill, because there have been female superheroes in the MCU the whole time, and they’re amazing, and they’re strong, and kickass, and all of those things. But I think what this moment in our culture, with Me Too and Times Up, saying, “We know we’ve made some progress, and that’s great, but we’re still not equal, and that’s clear by the fact that you’ve made 20 movies, and never had a female in the title.” So, this is a big moment, and it is a big deal, and I don’t want to downplay it.

I want to celebrate it and be excited about it.

Q : So, how did it feel in working with Michelle Pfeiffer then, after being obsessed about her.

Evangeline Lilly: I know! I was like, if anyone in the world says that I can pass as her daughter, I’m going to kiss them forever. It was a dream, to work with Michelle. Because the weird thing is, an actor, and maybe you guys experience this as journalists now and meeting actors, is that you can be obsessed with someone on the screen, and then you meet them, and they just destroy it for you. And you’re just like, “I wish I’d never met you.”

And you are the opposite of that.

Evangeline Lilly: Oh. Bless your heart. Thank you. I’m like, “I want you to be perfect, you know?” And that’s impossible. Who can live up to that? Michelle can. She can. She’s perfect, like, there’s no flaws. She’s nice. She’s generous. She’s smart. She’s funny. She’s intelligent. She’s considerate. She’s talented, and of course, she is the hottest sixty-something or however old she is you’re ever gonna meet. And so playing her daughter was an incredible honor, and also, I had to just bite my tongue, ’cause every day, I wanted to just be like, “Can you be my mentor?”

Q : Talk about having an all female superhero movie in the MCU. Who would you love to see in that?

Evangeline Lilly: I want all of the women in the MCU in a movie together. Because Marvel loves their fans, and really listen to them. But I have a girl crush on Okoye.

She’s so fierce and strong and present, and like, convicted. And talented. She’s my queen, I always call her my queen. And I would love to see the Wasp and Okoye kick some ass together.

We are strong because of our femininity, not in spite of it.”- @EvangelineLilly #AntManandtheWaspEvent

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Q : {Regarding the fight scenes in Ant-Man and the Wasp} Yours in the van was just so beautiful, absolutely stunning. Talk about the training that went behind that:

Evangeline Lilly: I love that you pointed out the van scene, because the restaurant scene is the one that everyone talks about, because it’s the big kind of spectacle fight in the movie. But what I like about the fact that you mentioned the van scene is the training that went into the fight.

I actually spent way less time worrying about getting my body rock hard and developing, you know, visual muscles as I spent in front of a mirror with my stunt doubles, making sure that we didn’t just take a dude, and put him in a woman’s body. I didn’t want to send the message that in order to be powerful and strong and capable and tough, you have to be masculine, and macho, and a dude.

I wanted to show that we are strong because of our femininity, not in spite of it. I wanted to show that, when Hope was Hope, and she was emotional and vulnerable and smiling and pleasant and happy and not like, just badass bitch, you know. I wanted to show that when she was fighting, by incorporating grace and elegance and femininity into the fight.

Like, no dude could do that, ’cause men can’t move that way, because they don’t have the flexibility, agility or the petiteness to come out a back window and in a front window. They just couldn’t. Like, let’s examine how a woman could have an advantage over a man, physically, because she’s a woman. Not because she figured out how to move like a man. And that was something I was really passionate about.

And I’m gonna just add to that I can’t wait to see a feminine, male superhero. When are we going to see that? You know, because we’ve seen masculine, female superheroes.

“It’s okay to be big. You can go ahead and be big,” – @EvangelineLilly to girls everywhere #AntManandTheWaspEvent

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Q : You mentioned that you fell into acting by accident. Can you talk about that?

Evangeline Lilly: That is the longest story. One day, I have to write a book about how you accidentally become a movie star. But it’s true. It was kind of an accident.

Before I hit puberty I was — I used to be called Brainiac. That was sort of my identity. I had freckles. I had buck teeth. I was scrawny. I had a totally flat chest, I was on the student council, and on the soccer team, and in the plays — my thing was over-achievement. My thing was not looking great. And my thing was not like, all of the boys wanted to date me or anything like that. My thing was – I have abilities, and I have intelligence.

And then I hit puberty and…all of a sudden, my entire identity according to the rest of the world was wrapped up in what I looked like. And I had all kinds of boys touch me in ways I didn’t want to be touched, and I had all kinds of girls hate me in ways that I didn’t want to be hated. And I decided that I needed to like, just not stand out. Like just don’t be super smart. Don’t be talented. Don’t stand out, ’cause if you do, you’re just gonna get hurt, so I spent like, five years kind of dumbing myself down and trying to pretend to be a wallflower.

When clearly I’m not a wallflower.

And that built up into a lot of pain. And at point, I had been scouted on multiple occasions. And then I had somebody very astutely say to me, “What are you afraid of?” I’m like, “I’m not afraid of anything. I just don’t want to be defined by being a pretty face, and that’s why they want me on camera.” And this person said, “I think you’re afraid of your own greatness.” And I erupted into heaving sobs, and I couldn’t stop crying, and something had broken open in me that I didn’t even realize that I had been doing, and I had to examine what that pain was. And when I did, I realized how much I had been hiding, and how much I had been trying not to shine, and I decided that I would start just letting my light shine.

And just being unabashed about who I was in the world. And one of the ways I thought I could do that was taking up an agent on their desire to put me in auditions. And I wanted to just exercise my brightness. I just wanted to be bold and bright. And I’d never really thought about the fact that auditions can lead to jobs. That hadn’t factored in. It was just like, “I’m just gonna go out and just shine!” You know?

I went out for my first audition in January or February of 2004, and in March of 2004, I was in Hawaii, shooting Lost. I think it was my fifth, maybe, audition. It just happened. And when they were like, “Oh. They want to bring you to LA for a show.” I was like, “What kind of test? Like, multiple choice?” I literally knew nothing about the business.

I was thinking about just expressing myself. So when I got a job, it was sort of just like, “Oh, shit, okay. I guess this is what I’m doing now.” I had been in university studying international relations and political science. I wanted to be a humanitarian or a diplomat or an ambassador. It was a total 180 for me, and therefore it was really hard. I really didn’t like it for a long time.

But eventually I came to terms with that, that one word, that was spoken into my life, of, “I think you’re afraid of this thing inside of you that feels big.” And I’m still always trying to tell myself, “It’s okay to be big. It’s okay. You can go ahead and be big,” And in this case, I get to be teeny.