Evangeline Lilly reprises her role as Hope Van Dyne/The Wasp in “Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania” this weekend. But the “Lost” actress wasn’t always so keen on starring in superhero movies. EW reports that on the latest Happy Sad Confused podcast episode, Lilly recalled the time she turned down the chance to star in an “X-Men” film–to Hugh Jackman‘s face.
The exchange went down when Lilly and Jackman worked on 2011’s “Real Steel” together. “[He] was like, ‘Hey, so, the “X-Men” guys are asking me if I would approach you because they know that you won’t talk to anybody,” Lilly started. “They knew I was working with you and were interested to know if it would ever interest you to do an “X-Men” thing.” But Lilly flatly declined the opportunity. “I was like, ‘No. It doesn’t interest me. I’m not interested,'” the actress continued. “I was like, ‘I feel like such a dick because I’m talking to an X-Men! The X-Men! And I’m telling him, ‘No that doesn’t appeal. Like, what?!’ I felt so rude!”
Lilly has a history of turning down superhero projects. On the podcast, the actress also talked about an audition she did for Joss Whedon for the Wonder Woman role, a character she had zero interest in doing. “I think my impression, coming away from it, was I had no desire and he could tell,” Lilly said about her DC audition. And she also claimed she was “too young to be that polite” to pretend she wanted the part of Wonder Woman at all. “It didn’t appeal and there was nothing about the meeting that like, jazzed me or made me think like, ‘Oh, I’ve gotta do this.’ Nothing clicked. Nothing felt good,” Lilly continued. “I am way too authentic for my own good. I mean, it’s not good. If I am not impressed, you’ll know. And maybe you shouldn’t know sometimes.”
But how did Whedon take to Lilly’s disinterest in being part of his DCEU vision. Not well, apparently, but the actress didn’t mind ruffling the director’s feathers. “I was okay with that,” Lilly said. “I was okay with burning bridges. I was okay with not having everyone in Hollywood wanna work with me.” And Lilly also didn’t mind turning her nose up at doing superhero movies as they reached the height of their popularity either. “I just always had to do what felt right for me,” said the actress. “And honestly, I wasn’t into superhero movies and that’s the main reason why, in both of these instances, I just kind of felt like I don’t know what I get out of this.”
So what changed Lilly’s mind and made her take on the Hope Van Dyne role in the MCU? Well, her agent convinced her to check out what Marvel Studios was doing because it was something different. “When I did, I was like, ‘Oh, they’re doing something very different and very cool.'” And now Lilly stars in her fourth MCU film with “Quantumania,” in theaters today. As for whether the MCU formula is that different from the other superhero roles Lilly turned down, that’s another story for another time.
