David Dastmalchian on 'Ant-Man and the Wasp,' Heath Ledger, and Abra Kadabra

While many will recognize David Dastmalchian for his scene-stealing turn as Kurt in Marvel's Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp, the actor has appeared all over the world of comic book adaptations over the last decade. His comic-inspired credits also include roles in The Dark Knight, The Flash, and Gotham.

Dastmalchian has truly covered all corners of the superhero genre, and he took some time to chat with ComicBook.com about how these roles have changed his life, what it was like working with Heath Ledger, and what could be next for Kurt after Ant-Man and the Wasp.

ComicBook.com: What's that been like as an actor you get to exist all the time in this world of nerd-dom?

​David Dastmalchian: Dude, I haven't just gotten to be a part of a comic book adaptation world. I feel like I've got to be a part of the best comic book adaptation worlds, do you know what I mean? I feel that Christopher Nolan's visions of the Batman universe was the best hands down portrayal of that world ever captured by a camera. And now, I am a tiny part of it but being a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is being a part of cinema history. I mean, what has been done by Marvel Studios is unprecedented and so I've used the word surreal to the point that it doesn't hold the meaning that it should hold. I wish you could see my office and you would get the stuff that populates my office, some of it's lived with me since I was nine years old and then I continue to accumulate.

The very first comic book I ever bought was my Avengers number 249 and I've got the original, you know, you can still see where I traced over it with tracing paper trying to draw my own comic covers and when I started to get to know Stan Lee, he actually signed it to my son for me so it's pretty nuts.

So yeah, beyond surreal, I guess. We need to come up with a new word. I'm so honored, I'm so fortunate and I don't take a second of it for granted 'cause I spend much more time at conventions as a patron than as a guest. And I have preferred that role in my life greatly and yet I always dreamed about how could I possibly in this world? How could I blend my love for acting and telling stories and creating characters with my love of fantasy, sci-fi and comic books? And here we are. And on the TV front, I mean, I get to play Abra Kadabra on The Flash and I think that the [producer Greg] Berlanti version of The Flash, the TV show, is one of the best comic book television adaptations that's been done, you know? Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of great TV comic book TV shows. I think that I've been digging Legion, obviously it's great. I think that a lot of stuff that Marvel's done with Netflix have been awesome.

But yeah, when they called me about Abra, I flipped. I was so excited.

Tell us a little bit about landing that role.

It was interesting. Rebirth was happening right around the time that I got the offer to play Abra and I like a lot what they did with him because he is, for all intents and purposes, a ridiculous character and ridiculous can be dangerous if you think about it.

​A lot of the villains that we know and love are ridiculous and that ridiculous nature that they have is what makes them so dangerous so his ego and his need for approval and attention, even though when you look at early incarnations of him as a character doing ridiculous things to get an audience to worship and applaud for him and utilizing all this incredible tech at his disposal in the future, just to get people to worship him is not that far fetched from some of the horror stories that we're watching play out on our news right now. You know what I mean?

There are, for all intents and purposes, complete clowns who have access to incredible resources and they're getting large amounts of people to worship them. So when I got the chance to go bring this character to life I was holding, I feel like I had even just put down the Titans Rebirth or maybe I was reading the Killer Frost Rebirth. I was reading one of the Rebirths when my agent even called and was like, "Hey, they're interested in you for this." And I was like, "Oh man, that's so exciting," because what I wanted to do and what I think that Berlanti has done so well is incorporate the Abra that I knew as a kid with the Abra that we know now find that tone that lives between the classic and contemporary version of the character and when I got up there and got to start playing with Grant and Jessie, the whole cast, I mean, they were so awesome. It was very, very fun and we'll hopefully get a chance to revisit that guy at some point, we'll see 'cause he didn't die.

I mean, I know that he was taken to the future for a supposed execution but that was never filmed, the execution so I feel like he needs to get a hold of Trickster's email or maybe a couple of guys and they can have some fun.

Before The Flash, your first foray into the world of comic book adaptations was a small role on The Dark Knight, where you worked with Heath Ledger.

​Yeah, that was my first movie. My dream was to work in Hollywood to work in movies. At the time I was doing theater in Chicago. My agent, Jenny Wilson, called me and said, "This is your dream. This is the thing that you've always wanted." I got to go in and audition for this movie and I auditioned for one of the clowns at the beginning of the movie in the heist scene and the casting director, he liked me, he brought me back in the next day. I got to sit and meet with Christopher Nolan and read the same, this heist sequence, which they shot a week later and I didn't get it and I was devastated.

I was devastated and then four months later Jenny called and said, "You're gonna be in the movie." And they wouldn't even tell me what I was doing so by the time I got to set I was so nervous, terrified, excited. My dreams were coming true but I didn't even know what that meant. I didn't know what role I was actually playing. I didn't know what lines I would have if I did have lines, what I was supposed to do. I just knew what I had been able to find out through the press and this was really before the online communities were as strong as they are now so there was very little information out there and I showed up to work and the first time I met Heath I was sitting in a makeup chair in a very long makeup trailer and that morning was one of the parade sequence mornings and so everybody was working and everybody was in the hair and makeup trailer.

So there I am, my first day on my first movie, sitting next to Christian Bale, Aaron Eckhart, Gary f****** Oldman, Heath Ledger getting the makeup done and he had been in first that morning because he had the longest day in the chair and so he was listening to music. I'll never forget he was getting the makeup put on and then, everybody was there that day and then afterwards he went outside of the trailer and I was so nervous. I was having a cup of coffee and we were introduced to one another and we started talking and we just kept talking and we talked about music and we talked about bands and he was so down to earth, so humble, so unassuming that if it weren't for the makeup he was wearing, you would have just thought he was a shy, kind, humble dude who was hanging around the set. He definitely evoked and emitted this kinetic energy that you could just feel from him because I think he was a very, very special human being.

​That being said, when we working together he always was so kind to me and we just had really cool conversations about things like music or bands or the city of Chicago and then when it was time for him to go into the zone, if you will, I marveled at watching him. He'd smile and say, "All right, hold on, I'm gonna go do this now." And then he would, it was as if he could turn a couple of clicks in his brain and turn into this monster, this thing that was, you know, I mean, one of the most iconic performances of our time by far, hands down. His performance in that role was so ... It achieved everything that you hope and dream for in a character in something you're watching. So I'll always be grateful to him for the kindness that he showed me for the way I felt like he took me under his wing. I didn't know how to properly fire the rifles that we were shooting and how to make that look realistic and he had worked a lot with armorists in this career and weapons in some of the movies he'd done.

So he took a lot of time showing me tricks of how to make that look really effective and things you can do to make it look like you know what you're doing and his technique, his gift, his talent combined with is skill as an actor was such that it was never about him. You hear about these other actors that walk around sets and they have to put on a big show and draw a lot of attention to themselves and act like they're in their character all the time and they're gonna some stupid thing to, you know, draw attention to themselves. No, this guy was a true actor, a true real actor and that's why his performance was so meaningful, I believe, because he didn't approach it like a vanity project. He didn't approach it like a PR stunt.

Now you've gotten to move over to the Marvel side of the world with your role in Ant-Man and the Wasp. What made your second turn as Kurt different from the first?

You know what's really cool about our role in this film is that the whole gang, the three guys and Scott and everyone who was involved on our side in the adventure of the first Ant-Man got really validated. Okay let's focus on the three guys, the Dave, Louis and Kurt triumvirate, we were really validated by the fact that we were able to do something positive, do something good. We were able to help a hero in the first one. These are three guys who are ex-cons who couldn't get hired even at any job that there was out there, like we were unemployable and so we now have been validated that we're like legitimate members of society. So we have started our own legit security business and we're really excited about that and we don't wanna get mixed up anymore with, obviously, all the hi-jinks that we've had to deal with in the past because that was crazy. So we're excited, it's like we got a legit business, we've got our office set up, Scott is one of our partners there and he and I share some office space together.

It's an exciting time in our lives and all of a sudden, the past comes back and Scott finds himself thrust into quite a circumstance and the rest of us by proxy because we're a team, we're a family. And these movies, what I love about the way [director] Peyton [Reed] and everyone at Marvel have crafted this Ant-Man journey for now Ant-Man and the Wasp is that these are family movies and they're about family and how family can grow in sometimes the most crazy places and circumstances. And so I feel like Scott and his crew, we're our own family, we're a bunch of outsiders and loners and outcasts and ex-cons and now we're a family and we're working for something good, trying to do something good. And all the relationships in the Ant-Man movies I love. I love the relationship between Hope and Hank, it's so beautiful and important.

So, one of the biggest talking points after Ant-Man and the Wasp is obviously the Infinity War cliffhanger after the credits. We didn't see what happened to Kurt after the Snap, did he make it?

I have this vision of a pile of dust and just a big pompadour on top of it. So if he goes out, he's going out with a pompadour bang, man and I guess that's all I'm allowed to say about that.