Scarlett Johansson joined Vanity Fair for a career retrospective video interview where she remembered feeling really uncool on the set of 2012’s “The Avengers.” The actor had already made her Marvel debut as Black Widow in “Iron Man” two years prior.
“When we made the first ‘Avengers’ none of us knew what the potential would be,” Johansson said. “‘Iron Man’ was massively successful. It was huge. It built the studio of Marvel. ‘Iron Man 2’ was also successful. There was ‘Thor,’ but that character felt like it was from a completely different universe. It was such a different tone from the ‘Iron Man’ movies. The ‘Captain America’ movie had its own identity as well. When you added the characters all together, plus Hulk and Hawkeye, it just felt like a big mess to be honest. Even on the set it felt crazy. We all looked insane. What are we doing? I don’t think anybody knew if it was going to work or not besides Kevin Feige and Joss Whedon. The cast had blind faith in them.”
It wasn’t until the “Avengers” actors filmed the icon moment where the camera spins around the superheroes as they prepare to fight that Johansson realized there was great potential in the comic book team-up film.
“I remember the scene where we all are in that 360 of the characters together,” she said. “That was the moment where we all thought this maybe could work. It felt powerful. When we watched the playback it looked really cool, but so much of it didn’t feel cool when we were shooting it. We were young. We were having such a great time. We became such great friends. It was a blast.”
“The Avengers” opened in summer 2012 to critical raves and $1.5 billion at the worldwide box office. While “Iron Man” had started the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2008, it was the blockbuster frenzy that greeted “The Avengers” that proved the studio’s plan to create an interconnected universe of movies could actually work with moviegoers.
Watch Johansson’s full interview with Vanity Fair in the video before.
