It’s gone slightly under the radar, but after a few underwhelming efforts Elizabeth Olsen is hitting a peak point in her career. After her breakthrough in “Martha Marcy May Marlene” six years ago, she starred in a number of forgettable indies (“Liberal Arts,” “I Saw The Light”) and a summer blockbuster most viewers probably don’t remember she was even in (“Godzilla”). She was fortunate enough to land the role of Wanda Maximoff aka The Scarlet Witch in Marvel Studios “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” however, and reprised her role in the very well received “Captain America: Civil War” a little over a year ago. The past 18 months have now seen both her blockbuster and indie efforts come to fruition.
At the 2017 Sundance Film Festival in January, Olsen had two films debut: Taylor Sheridan‘s directorial debut “Wind River” and Matt Spicer‘s dark comedy “Ingrid Goes West.” In “Wind River” Olsen plays Jane, an FBI agent sent to investigate a murder on an Indian Reservation in Montana. She’s assisted by a local Parks and Wildlife sharpshooter (Jeremy Renner) who has a connection to the victim. The film won Sheridan a Best Director honor in the Un Certain Regard competition at Cannes this past May and opened to an impressive $40,000 per screen in limited release this past weekend.
“Ingrid” centers on the title character (Aubrey Plaza), a socially awkward obsessive who discovers Instagram influencer Taylor (Olsen) and decides to move to Venice, California to stalk her and try and be her friend. The film has a lot to say about our current social media culture as well as the (often) shallow and faux progressiveness of this particular westside LA neighborhood.
Olsen has spent a good deal of time promoting those films, but most of her spring was spent shooting scenes for the highly anticipated “Avengers: Infinity War” which arrives in theaters next year. Both Olsen and this writer were on hand at the D23 Expo last month when Marvel Studios Kevin Feige surprised attendees with a sneak peek of the expected blockbuster which impressed even the most casual Marvel fans in attendance. And that’s where our conversation began…
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Gregory Ellwood: I was at D23. You were there.
Elizabeth Olsen: Yes.
You saw the “Avengers: Infinity War” footage.
I kind of saw the footage. The perspective that we were sitting from was really hard to see what was actually on screen and I never saw it. I didn’t come from Atlanta. The producer didn’t show it to me in Atlanta. I’m going to ask to see it when I go back there in September. I saw red hair and I was like, “I think that’s me.” I could feel what was happening, though. It was really cool.
I know you’ve been to Comic-Con in the past and you’ve had thousands of people scream for you. When you get that sort of reaction to something like this does it make you feel like, “Oh, all those days sitting around, it’s worth it?”
I expect that people who are fans are going to be excited, but I think there’s a pinch me moment every time we present something to a big audience of thousands of people.
It’s not like a comfortable feeling for me, but it’s a very strange experience to have that many eyes on you. But the thing that’s comforting is the fact that there’s like a ten year history that’s invested, and that people aren’t really just staring at you, they’re like in awe of this entire franchise and everyone else that’s on stage next to you moreso and just thinking about that is cool.
We’re 10 years in for Marvel Studios now and there’s people even in their early twenties who grew up with this as their franchise. In many ways this movie means everything to them.
Yeah, that’s what I feel like it must be to be Tom Holland. For him to grow up with these movies in this same way, in a different way than I grew up with “Star Wars” ’cause I grew up during a [the re-releases when] they went back into theater. The originals.
Maybe “Harry Potter”?
Yeah, I feel like I was a little old for “Harry Potter.” But for Tom, he really is on stage and in this franchise with his favorite film characters from his childhood. He’s probably just in awe, he’s probably still, “How the hell did I get here?” It’s really cool for him I bet.
You’ve had a pretty busy year and a half taking that into account. You shot “Wind River” when?
Last winter, so we ended the end of March.
So you have “Wind River,” you have another “Avengers” movie and you have the amazing “Ingrid Goes West.” Has this been a sort of a rewarding time, because you’ve done so many different, well-received projects?
It really has. You always go into a movie hoping it’s going to be good and it doesn’t always end up that way. But ‘Ingrid’ was also a massive a production, cause there are just so many crazy things that were working against us. Anything that could go wrong on a set went wrong on our set. From natural disasters to people getting injured. It was just a mess. It ended up being this alive, vibrant, funny movie. I knew that we were entertained when we were filming, but you never know if that translates. Then for [“Wind River”], for it to be something that is like a drama that we’ve cared so much about and had such a great experience filming, and it was difficult and hard but in all the good ways …For those to be movies that I really like at the end of the day is fucking amazing, and it sucks when it doesn’t turn out the way you want it to.
But you’ve got like three, actually four if you count ‘Civil War,’ knock ’em out of the park movies. For “Wind River” was it the script, was it the idea of working with Taylor Sheridan? Because “Hell or High Water” hadn’t even premiered yet when you signed on.
No, they were just filming it. I knew that they were making “Hell or High Water” and “Sicario” had come out. I signed on a little over a year before we started filming. I think it was a year. I think it was the winter before. I knew of Taylor’s writing just from “Sicario” and everyone said, “This guy’s hot. He has a movie that’s being made right now with this cast.” I’m like, “Yeah, but he’s directing it. It’s not just his writing. The script is amazing.” I don’t like being cold. I didn’t grow up skiing or anything. I also believe in enjoying the filming experience. For some reason, I was just like, “Oh no, am I going to do this to myself?” And it really wasn’t that bad. It actually was gorgeous. Now I have a love of the snow, [and the wilderness] that we filmed in. I didn’t have it before.
I won’t give away the movie, but there’s that sequence at the end, sort of an action sequence, where you’re literally all over the snow. Was that sort of an unusually hard day?
Every day, yeah. Unless we were filming inside houses or like, a morgue. We were filming every day in that kind of weather, and you just get used to it. The first thing I knew about Jeremy is that he’s a tough guy and Taylor is like a modern day, Marlboro Man meets a cowboy and I’m a tough girl. I just never complained about anything. It’s just what you had to do. It actually added to everyone’s motivation to get things done, to be more efficient. No one was sitting around complaining, and if they were they probably left the set, if they were on the crew or something. They were like, “This is too much.” But it only added to the experience. It was really, we really had a lot of fun making this movie, not like sitting around laughing, but a lot of fun being creatively challenged and feeling like we were going to work every day to do something we believed in.
What did Taylor tell you about Jane that wasn’t in the script? What did he tell you about her background before you started shooting?
Well, my instinct because I’m some strange person is I assumed that she had experienced trauma or something, some sort of wrongdoing was done to her when she was younger. And the reason why she wanted to become a federal agent was because, you know, her own traumatic past. Taylor was, “No, no. She truly believes in the justice system and she has a strong moral code. She probably went to school to be a lawyer. Then while she was there, became much more interested in crime and became a federal officer. This is her first time on an investigation, so she spends most of her days at court, but she’s probably number one in her class, graduated for weapon training.” That’s how we discussed her.
