If Evangeline Lilly ever made one smart move in her career, it was turning down Joss Whedon’s Wonder Woman. But did actions like that and rejecting Hugh Jackman’s offer to join X-Men hurt her career? The actress feels like every decision she’s made led her to her now-starring role in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
In a recent interview with the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Lilly dove into her career, her COVID-era drama, and turning down some serious offers. The actress got incredibly candid about turning down Joss Whedon’s Wonder Woman, a project long in development at the time, which later had a script leak showing the screenplay’s strange nature.
Lilly felt the strangeness and told Happy Sad Confused; she knew it wasn’t the right fit. “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,” says Lilly. “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.”
This approach made Lilly sense that Whedon took slight “offense taken,” adding, “I was okay with that. I was okay with burning bridges. I was okay with not having everyone in Hollywood wanna work with me…I just always had to do what felt right for me, 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.”
This wasn’t the only time she turned down a significant comic book movie offer; she says her Reel Steel co-star Hugh Jackman once tried to get her to join Fox’s X-Men franchise.“[Hugh] 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. They knew I was working with you and were interested to know if it would ever interest you to do an X-Men thing’. I was like, ‘No. It doesn’t interest me. I’m not interested.’”
She adds, “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!”
SEE ALSO: Read our review of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
Evangeline Lilly wouldn’t stay away from comic book movies for long; she’d joined Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man in 2015. Since then, she’s starred in Ant-Man and the Wasp, Avengers: Endgame, and now Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
You can find the full podcast interview below…
In Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Super-Hero partners Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) return to continue their adventures as Ant-Man and the Wasp. Together, with Hope’s parents Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), the family finds themselves exploring the Quantum Realm, interacting with strange new creatures and embarking on an adventure that will push them beyond the limits of what they thought was possible.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania finds Peyton Reed returning to the director’s chair for the third time and stars Paul Rudd (Scott Lang/Ant-Man), Evangeline Lilly (Hope Van Dyne/The Wasp), Michael Douglas (Hank Pym), Michelle Pfeiffer (Janet Van Dyne), Randall Park (Jimmy Woo), Corey Stoll (Darren Cross/Yellowjacket), Kathryn Newton (Cassie Lang), Jonathan Majors (Kang the Conqueror), Bill Murray (Krylar), and William Jackson Harper.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is in cinemas now.
