MCU Rookie Tatiana Maslany Reveals How Mark Ruffalo Got Her...
MCU Rookie Tatiana Maslany Reveals How Mark Ruffalo Got Her Ready To Play She-Hulk: "You Get To Be A Total Goof"
We try to pry some answers out of the Emmy-winning actress about Charlie Cox's cameo as Daredevil on Marvel's latest Disney+ series, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.
Douglas Tseng
18 Aug 2022 at 14:41
Hollywood Tatiana Maslany She-Hulk: Attorney at Law Marvel Studios
Orphan Black star Tatiana Maslany said Mark Ruffalo helped her ease into the role of the title character in Marvel's latest Disney+ series, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.
In She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, Maslany stars as Jennifer Walters, an attorney specialising in superhuman-oriented legal cases, who also happens to be an emerald-skinned 2-metre tall ogre. She got her enhanced strength from her cousin Bruce Banner aka The Incredible Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), following a car accident where his Gamma radiation-exposed blood is mixed with hers.
The nine-part series — created by Jessica Gao (Rick & Morty) — is Marvel Studios' first comedy series. It's also Maslany's first comedy as well as the first time she's stepping into the shoes of a super hero.
And Maslany couldn't have found a more experienced actor to tutor her about the ins and outs of the Marvel Cinematic Universe than Ruffalo, a veteran with five MCU movies under his belt — starting with 2012's Avengers, followed by 2015's Avengers: Age of Ultron, 2017's Thor: Ragnarok, 2018's Avengers: Infinity War and 2019's Avengers: Endgame. (Actually, six, if you count his Iron Man 3 cameo.)
The moment Maslany and Ruffalo met, they got along swimmingly. "Mark and I really found that dynamic between Hulk and She-Hulk and Jen and Bruce," the Emmy-winning actress said in the production notes. "The scripts lean into this lovingly antagonistic sort of sibling relationship – they obviously grew up very close. She's always taking him down a notch; he's always taking her down a notch."
"I really loved working with Mark who works from a place of child-like openness," she added. "So much of our work together is in those mocap suits — we're just two babies in weird onesies who get to wrestle and make fun of each other."
Keeping it in the family: Smart Hulk / Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) prepares to run an experiment on his cousin Jennifer.
Besides Ruffalo, Maslany also found inspiration in the music of late experimental producer and performer Sophie.
Speaking to Variety at the show's premiere at Hollywood's El Capitan Theatre on Monday (Aug 15), Maslany said. "Musically, Sophie just lives in this place that I always want to live in, but there's a poppiness and femininity combined with these clashing industrial sounds.
Sophie, whose full name is Sophie Xeon, died at age 34 in January 2021 in a climbing accident in Greece. Her 2018 album, Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides was nominated for a Grammy Award as best dance/electronic album.
"What I love about Jen aka She-Hulk is the fact that she's a contraction," said Maslany in the production notes. "She's so completely fixated on work, and yet she has this huge heart. She loves being She-Hulk, but at the same time resents it. There's a lot of fun tension to play with in those contradictions."
And those contradictions and Sophie's songs have a lot in common, Maslany observed. "Her music video 'Faceshopping' was all about skin, commodification of body and being separated into different parts, and that all felt thematically and spiritually connected," she told Variety.
In a separate video interview with 8days.sg, Maslany lets us in more about her working relationship with Ruffalo, the what-if situation of Jennifer taking on Captain America as a client, and Charlie Cox's highly-anticipated cameo as Daredevil. (Sorry, she can't divulge much about the latter.)
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law premieres on Aug 18 on Disney+, with new episodes dropping every Thursday.
Photos: TPG News/Click Photos, Chuck Zlotnick, Marvel Studios
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