The Marvels and Ms. Marvel star Iman Vellani has been living a fan’s greatest dream during her meteoric rise to Marvel Cinematic Universe star – and her appreciation of that fact is papable and clear in every interview she does. Now that the Actors’ Strike is over Vellani is out promoting The Marvels, and she revealed to late-night host Seth Meyers that she actually had one big bucket list item to fulfill while making the film: getting cursed out by Samuel L. Jackson.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Vellani talked about filming an early action scene in The Marvels where her character Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel ends up place-switching with Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) in a battle with Kree warriors on the S.A.B.E.R. space station. The fight is a dream come true for Kamala, who has long idolized The Avengers and Nick Fury; however, Vellani nearly got a real-life dream to come true when it came to hearing Sam Jackson’s world-famous profanity:
In her anecdote about the scene, Vellani describes how she tried to improvise Kamala’s bonding moment with Fury at the end of the fight by giving Jackson an unscripted high-five. The move wasn’t usable on-camera as Vellani apparently covered her face with her hand, so Jackson suggested they change it to a friendly elbow-bump from Kamala to Fury. When Vellani was too timid with the move after several takes, Jackson took her by the elbow, and said “‘Elbow me, motherf*cker!’”
….Well, not really.
“For the record, he didn’t actually swear at me,” Vellani quickly admitted, explaining, “That’s just how I heard it. I was trying to get him to swear at me for so long… Nothing but hugs.”
As Seth Meyers pointed out, the overall interview yielded two facts about Iman Vellani’s bucket list: getting serenaded by Billy Joel while called a “motherf*cker” by Samuel L. Jackson.
As stated: there’s a good reason so many Marvel fans adore her.
The Marvels is now in theaters.
In The Marvels, (now in theaters), Carol Danvers aka Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) has reclaimed her identity from the tyrannical Kree and taken revenge on the Supreme Intelligence. But unintended consequences see Carol shouldering the burden of a destabilized universe. When her duties send her to an anomalous wormhole linked to a Kree revolutionary, her powers become entangled with that of Jersey City super-fan, Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) aka Ms. Marvel, and Carol’s estranged niece, now S.A.B.E.R. astronaut Captain Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris). Together, this unlikely trio must team-up and learn to work in concert to save the universe as “The Marvels.”
The Marvels will also see the franchise returns of Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Saagar Shaikh as Aamir Khan, Zenobia Shroff as Muneeba Khan, and Mohan Kapur as Yusuf Khan. New cast members include Zawe Ashton, Park Seo-joon, and Shamier Anderson. Produced by Marvel Studios, The Marvels is directed by Nia DaCosta with a script from DaCosta, Megan McDonnell, and Elissa Karasik.