WandaVision Star Paul Bettany Reveals He Didn’t Want Live-Audience

WandaVision‘s Paul Bettany didn’t want a live audience before the Disney+ show started filming. Seth Myers talked to the A Very British Scandal star about his time in the sitcom genre. The Vision actor admitted that he wasn’t too keen on the idea at first. But, when he got that first acknowledgement from the crowd, everything snapped into place. WandaVision was such a dramatic departure from everything else that had come before it in the MCU. Most of the movies are action/comedies. But, the Disney+ show was not only the first Marvel TV show made by Marvel Studios, it was the signal of things to come on the streaming platform. Since then, while none of them have veered as far as WandaVision there’s some clear genre at play with each entry. That meant that Bettany and Elizabeth Olsen had to settle into their roles as live sitcom performers for a lot of the show.

“I was really resistant,” Bettany admitted. “I really didn’t want to do it, and I said, ‘I think this is a really bad idea.’ And they said, ‘Well, we think it’s the only way we can get the energy that they had where they’re projecting past the cameras to an audience.’ And I said, ‘Okay, okay.’ And I was so nervous, and then I got onstage, and I got my first laugh, and I’m so shallow that I was like, ‘I’ve wasted my entire life! I should be doing sitcoms. What have I done?’”

WandaVision showrunner Jackman Schaeffer talked about the live-audience conceit on THR’s TV Top 5 podcast. “One of the things that was wonderful about that audience is it was mostly a friends and family audience. So my parents were there, my husband was there, some dear friends were there, and they also were encouraged to dress in 1950s theme,” Schaeffer explained. “So there was this lovely celebratory party atmosphere to the whole thing. Anytime you ask people to be in costume, they feel like they’re part of something, and it was a lot of parents, a lot of aunts and grandparents, and so that was part of the design.”

Schaeffer added, “It was very early on in the room that Mary [Livanos, producer] and I were like, ‘What if we did this in front of a [live audience]? Could we possibly do this in front of a live studio audience?’ And it felt like a pipe dream at the time. We were like, ‘What if we did it for all of them?’ (laughs) That was never gonna happen.”

WandaVision is currently streaming on Disney+. 

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