Actress Anya-Taylor Joy has revealed that she had one true condition for lending her voice to Princess Peach in The Super Mario Bros. Movie: The ruler of the Mushroom Kingdom had to be a more “modern” ruler than any of her previous incarnations.
Joy opened up on her experience bringing the pink-clad heroine to life during a recent interview with SlashFilm given in promotion of the Nintendo animated feature’s upcoming premiere.
Eventually turning to the topic of the ‘girlboss‘ attitude being applied to Princess Peach’s cinematic incarnation – best demonstrated in the film’s previews in the scene where she can be seen confidently kicking a halberd weapon into her hands without looking – SlashFilm writer Jenna Busch asked the actress if she could “talk about your approach to this version of the character”, to which Joy replied by recalling how “When I was first approached about playing Peach, I was, A) extremely honored, but B) a little bit hesitant just because in my head, before I met everybody, I thought, “Oh, I really want to do this, but I only want to do it if she is a modern — not only princess, but ruler.”
“She’s really a leader in this,” the New Mutants star explained. “I felt like we could create a more three-dimensional character that had her own agency. I was so thrilled when I first met everybody that everyone was on the same page. We all wanted to do the same thing. That just made for a very exciting process because there are moments where I did want to call back to the original game and have that fandom payoff in that way.”
“But also, it wouldn’t have worked for the whole of the movie,” she then argued. “She’s a three-dimensional character now. You have to have colors in her voice. I just feel very grateful that I was supported every step of the way and that there wasn’t any pushback.”
It should be noted that despite the assertions of both Joy and some supposed series ‘fans’, Princess Peach’s character has long evolved past her being the simple ‘damsel in distress’ that pop-culture has portrayed her as.
While it is true that Peach not only started off her existence as such a character and continues to occasionally fulfill that role on a game-to-game basis, the dismissal of her character as nothing more than a helpless prize disingenuously ignores all the subsequent instances in which she played pivotal and capable roles in a story’s respective narrative.
In Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, though Princess Peach is at one point captured by Bowser, she eventually deceives her guards, escapes, and joins Mario in his fight against the villainous Smithy and his imperialistic aims against her kingdom.
Likewise, the events of Super Paper Mario see Princess Peach fight alongside Mario, Bowser, and Luigi in order to stop the evil machinations of Count Beck, with the Princess even getting a particularly heroic moment during these events wherein she rescues from certain death an enemy who did nothing but insult her history as a kidnap victim.
Though sadly taking a step back from being a playable character, Peach also played an important role in the events of Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, therein not only leading the initial charge to rescue Mario and Luigi from the past, but also trapping the game’s central antagonist, Elder Princess Shroob, within the Cobalt Star before shattering it and temporarily preventing her revival.
Returning to the playable character fold, Peach would then receive her own dedicated solo adventure in the form of Super Princess Peach, which flipped the script by tasking Peach with running, jumping, and platforming in order to rescue Mario and Luigi from Bowser’s clutches.
Barely over a decade ago, Super Mario 3D World saw the Princess not only once again step up to the plate as a playable character, but also (as seen in the game’s opening cutscene) serve as the first of the main party to rush to fend off Bowser’s latest attack.
And of course, in perhaps the most prominent piece of evidence against Peach’s current stereotyping, there’s the fact that she made her playable debut in 1988’s Super Mario Bros. 2, replete with her own unique sprites and mechanics.
(While some have attempted to point to Peach’s appearance in the Super Smash Bros. series as further evidence of her personal capabilities, it should be noted that these titles are essentially representative of what a child may imagine while playing with figures of the characters and thus should not be considered canon to any of the involved series.)
The Super Mario Bros. Movie hops, jumps, and slams its way into theaters on April 5th, 2023.