The actress started out as an independent star and never expected to become a Marvel fixture like Wanda Maximoff. But now she's so into the role that she's open to starring in a solo movie.
Elizabeth Olsen admits that playing Wanda Maximoff “took me away from her physical ability to do certain jobs that I thought were more in line with the things that she enjoyed as an audience member.”
Elizabeth Olsen is used to waiting in the wings. When she was an acting student at New York University, she landed an understudy role in Impressionism, the Broadway play starring Jeremy Irons. The show ran for 56 performances. Olsen did not go on stage even once.
Those kinds of missed opportunities can affect an actress's mind, but Olsen was never in a hurry to steal the limelight from her. Years later, when she was cast as the reality-bending witch Wanda Maximoff in Avengers: Age of Ultron, her character was more of a supporting Avenger, and in the subsequent three Marvel movies—each with a set of superheroes more crowded than the previous one—Olsen never went beyond being the tenth protagonist.
However, something curious happened after waiting all that time: WandaVision, a comedic spoof about Wanda and her android husband, became an unexpected phenomenon when it premiered early last year on Disney+. This month, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which co-stars Olsen and pits her troublesome witch against Benedict Cumberbatch's bearded wizard, has proved even more important. The film grossed $185 million in its first three days of release, ranking 11th in the top domestic opening weekends of all time.
For Olsen, who first made her name in independent film, that's like turning the page of a comic book and finding a huge panel all to herself. During a video call last week, I asked her how she felt about coming to the fore as the lead actress in a blockbuster.
“I am totally embarrassed!” she commented. "I'm not going to see her."
Hours later, Olsen was on the red carpet for the Hollywood premiere of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, but she planned to flee the theater as soon as the film began. "It's the first time I've felt this pressure," she explained. "I have a lot of anxiety about the release of Doctor Strange because I've never had to lead a commercial film by myself."
She coughed as she unwrapped a foil packet: "Sorry, I have a sore throat lozenge."
Olsen, 33, comes across as easygoing and friendly, exuding a Californian glow so potent you'd hardly know she's been sick for days. "It's just annoying," she says, as she takes a drink of water from a glass jar. "I think my body wants to relax." She embarked on this world press tour the day after wrapping up a seven-and-a-half-month shoot for HBO's limited series Love and Death, the kind of jam-packed schedule that also required her to shoot WandaVision and Doctor Strange back-to-back.
