Make no mistake: Brie Larson, actress, Oscar winner, and soon to be Marvel Studios premiere superheroine, is in full-on beast mode.
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Compelling evidence came from video stored on Samuel L. Jackson’s cell phone, which the venerable Marvel star eagerly shared with reporters visiting the set of the forthcoming “Captain Marvel” last spring which showed Larson’s commitment to getting as fit as strong as she possibly could to play the title role, actually using her newly built-up physique to pushing a Jeep up a hill under her own power – not a stunt for the film, not a CG creation, just a sampling of how strong she’d become in her bid to embody Carol Danvers.
“Oh my gosh – he showed those to you too? I can’t believe it!” said a flummoxed Larson on set a few days later when reporters brought up the video. “I feel like I’m close to 100 people that have come up to me and been like, ‘I saw this video that you sent Sam.’ It’s so embarrassing – I sent that to him in private…I was like, ‘Whyyyy?’ I know, I know: he knows I came from humble beginnings.”
The Jeep video was originally both an in-joke between Larson and her trainer Jason Walsh, but also a chance to highlight just how far she’d come in her physical quest after months of discipline. “I was getting super strong. and I was like, ‘Well, [Carol] can move planets; the least I could do is move a car,’” Larson laughs. “I just showed up in the gym one day and he was like, ‘All right, let’s do it.’ And I pushed the car, yeah.”
After explaining how the feat was performed with plenty of safeguards, she revealed just how good it felt to flex her own power. “It felt super satisfying, and I felt really crazy afterwards,” she explained. “I had never lifted weights, or done things until this movie like that. So you get these crazy highs, and then you’re just kind of collapse onto the floor.”
Her desire to push her own physical limits wasn’t the result of some actorly Method mentality, but rather “really all came out of ignorance, to be honest,” she explained. “I didn’t realize that most people don’t do their own stunts in these movies. I thought you did, and I’ve never been a particularly elegant or athletic person. I’m just an introvert with asthma, and felt like I needed to be able to do that. I just thought, ‘I don’t wanna be on set, and they ask me to do things, and I don’t know how to do it.’ So I started training as soon as I could.”
“Everyone just went along with it, and was like, ‘Cool,’” Larson added. “It wasn’t until we started shooting, and I started doing all my own wire work stunts, and flips and stuff that people were like, ‘Now we’ll tell you: nobody actually does this. We just didn’t want you to stop. But now that you’ve kind of accomplished this thing, we don’t normally do this.” And I was like, ‘Huh?’ But I love it.”
And ultimately, Larson found that reshaping herself actually did bring her closer to capturing exactly who Carol Danvers is, despite any added inconveniences. “I could be taking a lot more naps than I am. I could just be like, ‘[My stunt doubles] Renee and Joanna got it – I’m gonna go eat some cake.”‘But instead it’s really become a huge part of how I learned more about her, and became her, and embodied her – itwas through that, was through discovering my own strength. A pretty amazing thing.”
Captain Marvel follows Carol Danvers as she becomes one of the universe’s most powerful heroes when Earth is caught in the middle of a galactic war between two alien races. Set in the 1990s, Captain Marvel is an all-new adventure from a previously unseen period in the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Captain Marvel stars Academy Award® winner Brie Larson (Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel), Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury), Ben Mendelsohn, Djimon Hounsou (Korath), Lee Pace (Ronan), Lashana Lynch, Gemma Chan (Minn-Erva), Algenis Perez Soto, Rune Temte, McKenna Grace, Kenneth Mitchell (Joseph Danvers), with Clark Gregg (Phil Coulson), and Jude Law.
Captain Marvel launches on March 8, 2019, while Avengers 4 hits on May 3, 2019, followed by Spider-Man: Far From Home on July 5, 2019.
