Marvel’s WandaVision star Teyonah Parris, who returns as Monica Rambeau in Captain Marvel 2, says it’s an “honor and a blessing” to bring the next Black female superhero into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Now starring as “Geraldine” and S.W.O.R.D. Agent Rambeau in WandaVision, where Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) is living in “TV Land” with Vision (Paul Bettany) after Avengers: Endgame, Parris is “having a lot of fun” in the first original series from Marvel Studios. The franchise newcomer next joins superheroes Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) and Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) in the Captain Marvel sequel taking flight in 2022, where Parris reunites with her Candyman director Nia DaCosta.
“To be able in this day and age to say, ‘I get to portray a Black female superhero, and be that vision, that image that I wish, prayed I would have seen as a young girl,’ it’s really incredibly an honor and a blessing,” Parris told Entertainment Tonight. “And I’m just really excited for the opportunity, and I’m having a lot of fun. They’re a lot of fun over here [at Marvel].”
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The Dear White People star may be new to the MCU, but audiences first met an 11-year-old Monica (Akira Akbar) in the mid-’90s-set Captain Marvel. Monica’s close-up encounter with Captain Marvel, the best friend of mom Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch), would shape her superhero future — and Parris’ performance as the 28-years-older Monica.
“When I started to do my character work, I definitely went to the comic books on my own and I still am mining through who she was in the comics,” Parris recently told Variety. “And I also looked to Akira Akbar’s performance in Captain Marvel, and what she brought in. Obviously, as a child, when you grow, you change — you can be totally different than you were as a child. But I do think that there are elements of who we are as young people that remain with us. And not only that, but the relationships we have with those who are in our lives. So, the relationship she had with her mom, Maria Rambeau [or] Carol Danvers / Captain Marvel — how do those relationships influence her?”
As for the grown-up Monica’s superhero identity — her comic book counterpart was the first female Captain Marvel and operated under the codenames Photon, Pulsar, and Spectrum — Parris doesn’t know “how or who she will be in the MCU.” As she told Variety, “[Monica] changes names, and she kicks butt in all of them. So, I don’t know who she will be in her superhero form. But I am excited by the thought of many of them.”
New episodes of WandaVision premiere Fridays on Disney+. Captain Marvel 2 opens in theaters on November 11, 2022.
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