British actress Thandiwe Newton has been making a career tackling genre projects with roles like Maeve in HBO‘s “Westworld,” the female lead in John Woo‘s “Mission: Impossible 2,” “The Chronicles of Riddick,” Guy Ritchie‘s gangster comedy “RockNRolla,” “Interview with the Vampire,” and now reunites with “Westworld’s” Lisa Joy for the new feature, “Reminiscence.”
Speaking with LAD Bible to promote the new sci-fi film, Thandiwe Newton revealed she had turned down a superhero project because they wanted her to play someone’s mother that just dies and expresses boredom towards most of these moneymaking franchises.
This sentiment sounds like it could be connected to her on-camera death in “Solo: A Star Wars Story” that was thrust upon her during the Ron Howard reshoots, as the more mysterious version of the scene was said to be too expensive.
“I was offered a role playing someone’s mum who just dies. I was like, ‘Meh, no.’ It was more the role, you know what I mean?” Newton said of the lackluster part she was offered.
She added, “As a genre, they bore me these big franchises.”
However, Newton isn’t completely against making a superhero project, but it would likely rely on who is making it and what the film’s angle is beyond making money. The actress seems to be a big fan of Taika Waititi‘s Marvel Studios pic “Thor: Ragnarok,” not the first time she has brought the film up in an interview.
“I love what’s happening with these genres now, where filmmakers are fucking with the genre. The perfect example is Taika Waititi, what he did with ‘Ragnarok.’ I love that the actors in it really want to push it too, of course, they do – it’s boring otherwise, Jesus.”
She also brings how the”Watchmen” series did an excellent job adding real-world events to teach the audience, “And you know, the fact that ‘Watchmen’ used Tulsa [race massacre of 1921] in the origin story of that show, that’s critical race theory, you know, looking into the past and actually merging with it in the present so that we have a better understanding for our future.”
It’ll be interesting if she’ll start getting better offers, considering that Ethan Hawke was quite vocal about his own issues with superhero projects only to sign on for Marvel’s “Moon Knight” series.
