WandaVision’s Teyonah Parris Was Fan Cast as Monica Rambeau Before Winning Her Marvel Role

WandaVision‘s Teyonah Parris was actually fan cast as Monica Rambeau before winning the Marvel role. With Episode 4 of the series streaming on Disney+, it’s become even more clear that Rambeau is a key part of this show. Recently, Parris sat down with The A.V. Club to talk about how this whole WandaVision thing came to be. The actress explained that Marvel keeps things pretty close to the vest, but when she was informed about being Rambeau, it was time to read up. During her independent research, she learned even more about the character and built on the knowledge from the fan-casting. If the initial reactions to the show are any indication, things are going great so far as people seem to love her rendition of the SWORD agent. Check out her rendition of it down below:

“No, actually. I mean, they didn’t even give me the name at first,” she revealed. “Oh my, I didn’t know. I was like, ‘Yeah, I got a role! What’s the role? I’ll do it!’ And then they told me, oh yeah, it’s Monica Rambeau. I was like, wow. Okay. And so I just started doing my own research. I had actually been introduced to Monica Rambeau years before. Fans were fan casting me on Twitter as Monica Rambeau. And so, that initially piqued my interest. I was like, ‘Oh wow! She is a bad…self. So, I was really excited about her and then to be able to actually play her, bring her to the screen, has been an amazing journey.”

In some other comments to Variety, the star noted that she had actually studied Akira Akbar’s performance in Captain Marvel to help drive home that this was supposed to be the same little girl audiences were introduced to before.

“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 recalled. “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?”

Do you think Monica will have powers by the end of WandaVision? Let us know down in the comments!