Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning: Pom Klementieff Talks Creating Her Villainous Character

Most movie fans know Pom Klementieff as the lovable and empathetic Mantis from Marvel’s . Mantis often puts a smile on your face and wants to bring joy to all her friends, making her a character that’s easy to like. In the upcoming Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, Klementieff will be trying something totally different, taking on the role of a villain. Klementieff is playing a mysterious character named Paris, who can be seen in the Dead Reckoning trailers wearing eerie mime makeup.

A villainous role is one that we aren’t used to seeing from Klementieff, but she seemed to have a blast putting Paris together. While speaking to ComicBook.com’s Brandon Davis, Klementieff opened up about how she crafted her new Mission: Impossible villain.

“So much fun. I had so much fun creating the character,” she said. “And what is fun also is that the character was not written at all on paper. What Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise do is they cast the actor and then build the character around the actor’s abilities and all the conversations that we have. So it was just nothing at first, and it became just all these things that we added and I came up with. You know, different ideas. The makeup that the character wears in Venice, with the white and the teardrop. I thought it would be fun to wear, to draw a mask on my face instead of wearing one, because at some point other characters were supposed to wear a mask. And I thought, ‘You know, she’s a rebel.’ She doesn’t really care. So I thought she would wear something that is a little bit strange just to make fun of the whole thing.”

“I thought it’d be funny because it’s a little bit sad, melancholic, but she would look like a thug,” Klementieff continued. “And then with a sweat, with a fight, it would all just drip down. And then I look like a monster at some point. It was so many little ideas and they’re so down for that, you know? They’re like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s great. And what about this? And what about this?’ So it was such a collaborative process.”

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two

The Dead Reckoning story is one that’s being told in two parts. This summer sees the release of the first Dead Reckoning, while the second is slated for release next year. With delays caused by the ongoing WGA strike, however, there’s no telling if the film will make that release date. Klementieff is slated to appear in both Dead Reckoning films.

Tom Cruise is back as Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, which premieres in theaters on July 12th. It’s the beginning of the end for the action-packed franchise, as Cruise reteams with longtime collaborator and filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie for more death-defying and breathtaking stunts. Hunt and allies Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames), and Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) attempt to track down a new weapon with the power to tear the world apart. Actors Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff, and Esai Morales join the cast for the latest installment in the Mission: Impossible franchise, which is set to wrap up with Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two.