As we’ve seen in the trailers for Marvel Studios’ Black Widow, there’s a family dynamic going on with Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff and Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour) and Melina Vostokoff (Rachel Weisz), and now thanks to comments from Harbour and Weisz in the recently-released Marvel’s Black Widow: The Official Movie Special book, we have some insight into the characters’ history together.
“The connection to [Alexei] and Black Widow is that they were set up as a spy family in America in the ’90s,” states Harbour. “So, Rachel Weisz’s character, Melina, was sort of the mom, Alexei was the dad, and Natasha and Yelena were their little kids. We see that in the beginning of the movie, and they sort of function as a family. So they knew each other from long ago and then they lost touch for almost twenty years. And when we pick up, Alexei’s had this deep knowledge of Natasha in a certain way that no one else had when she was a kid. He took her from the Red Room and also put her back into the Red Room because he believed in this cause.”
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Confirming that the movie will feature flashback scenes to the 1990s, Weisz went on to add that: “At the start of the film I’m a Russian spy posing as an American mom. I’m pretending that little Natasha and little Yelena are my children and that Alexei is my husband. It’s been wonderful to be Melina because I get Then you cut to twenty years later, and she’s living out on her own, and she’s a scientist. She’s living in quite a deserted place living with pigs, which is quite something. I’ve never acted with pigs before. They’re absolutely adorable, big, furry pigs. So my character does go through a lot of twists and turns. There’s never been a dull moment.”
In Marvel Studios’ action-packed spy thriller “Black Widow,” Natasha Romanoff, aka Black Widow, confronts the darker parts of her ledger when a dangerous conspiracy with ties to her past arises. Pursued by a force that will stop at nothing to bring her down, Natasha must deal with her history as a spy and the broken relationships left in her wake long before she became an Avenger.
Black Widow is being directed by Cate Shortland (Lore) and sees Scarlett Johansson reprising her role as Natasha Romanoff alongside Florence Pugh (Fighting With My Family) as Yelena Belova, O-T Fagbenle (The Handmaid’s Tale) as Mason, David Harbour (Stranger Things) as Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian, Rachel Weisz (The Favourite) as Melina Vostokoff/Iron Maiden, Ray Winstone (Sexy Beast) as Dreykov and Olivier Richters (The King’s Man) in an as-yet-unrevealed role.
