Evangeline Lilly Reveals How She Found Out The Wasp Would Get Equal Billing in ‘Ant-Man’ Sequel

Marvel fans were excited to see The Wasp getting equal billing in the Ant-Man sequel, but they weren’t as excited as Evangeline Lilly.

In fact, Lilly had been hoping to get a suit of her own since taking the part of Hope Van Dyne in the original Ant-Man. In an interview with THR Lilly explains how much she wanted the chance to fly as The Wasp and reveals how she learned about her lead role in the sequel.

“When they cast me in the first Ant-Man, I knew that if the first film was a box-office success, then that would mean I would get to put on a suit,” Lilly said. “So there was probably no one more invested in the box office numbers of Ant-Man than me. Once the film was successful enough to warrant a second, and I knew that that was going, I still didn’t know that Wasp would be getting equal billing with Ant-Man. So that came as a surprise later: I got a surprise email with nothing but a JPEG of the title card. And that was how they told me. Pretty cool.”

The Wasp finally gets a chance to shine in the sequel, but it’s really an organic continuation of the character’s foundations in Ant-Man.

“Even for the first film, it was very important to me that Hope be an extremely empathetic and compassionate person,” Lilly said. “And I still did that while having that stereotypical or archetypical [quality] of femininity of being nurturing, compassionate, empathetic. Men can of course be compassionate or feminine, but femininity is at the core of what is disrespected in the patriarchy, so it was important to me to always push for feminine qualities to be apparent when she is dealing with situations — how she emotionally reacts to them, [for instance].”

One thing she did want to change for this film though was the fighting style she employed.

“In her fight scenes, as trivial as it might seem, I really pushed and fought for her to fight with elegance, grace and femininity,” Lilly said. “She moves differently than a man. I wanted her to have a signature style that little girls, like I was when I was a feminine, girly little girl, would be able to fall in love with, emulate and relate to in their own movements.”

“When we did Ant-Man I had to study a little bit of Muay Thai and MMA style fighting,” Lilly said. “And MMA style fighting is distinctly masculine, it’s got a very masculine posture and a very masculine attack, and that was so difficult for me because I don’t move that way naturally. I really wanted to change that in this film. I wanted to move the way my body wants to move, as a more graceful, feminine woman.”

Avengers: Infinity War is now playing in theaters. Other upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe movies include Ant-Man and the Wasp on July 6th, Captain Marvel on March 8, 2019, the fourth Avengers movie on May 3, 2019, the sequel to Spider-Man: Far From Home on July 5th, 2019, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in 2020.