‘She-Hulk: Attorney At Law’ Star Tatiana Maslany Says Head Writer Jessica Gao Was The Deciding Factor In Her Decision To Join Marvel Series: “I Was Like, ‘This Is So Funny, And So Not A Superhero Thing”
According to She-Hulk: Attorney at Law star Tatiana Maslany, the make-or-break factor in her decision to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe was the involvement of head writer Jessica Gao, as the actress found both her writing and proposed series direction to be less ‘superhero-y’ than expected.
The first actress to portray the Jade Giantess in live-action, Maslany spoke to the beginnings of her Marvel career while talking with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff as part of the outlet’s Collider Ladies Night interview series.
Kicking off the Gamma-radiated portion of their discussion, Nemiroff asked the actor as to what it was about the series that led her to accept its starring role, to which she recalled, “That size of thing was always something that I avoided even thinking of doing because it felt so big, and it felt so enormous to make a decision like that, but “what ultimately [got me on board was] the script and my meeting with Jessica Gao before the audition.”
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“I was like, ‘Oh She’s so funny. She’s so interesting. I’m so curious about her take on this character. I feel like she and I can build something really interesting, and we have a similar sense of humor, and that just became more and more apparent as I was working on the project, that she was like ‘the thing’,” said Maslany. ” But yeah, reading the pilot, I was like, ‘Oh, this is so funny’. It was actually a different pilot than the order that the series came out, but I was like, ‘This is so funny, and so not a superhero thing. It feels like I can find my way into this.'”
Further, Maslany also noted that she was particularly intrigued by “the idea of, and we sort of got into this in the series, inhabiting a body that makes people talk to you differently, respect you differently, treat you differently, objectify you.”
“What does that do inside to how you feel about yourself?” she explained. “Where does that instill confidence? Where does that detract from how you know yourself to be when you are performing what people expect? And I think that was also tied in with [the idea that] if I’m taking on this part, I’m sort of embodying that in the world, too. I’m stepping into something that’s bigger than me, that I don’t know that I am that. I don’t know that I can fill that out. People are going to be looking at me and saying things and deciding things. There’s something about it that felt very meshed in with my feelings about even stepping into it.”
From there, Nemiroff raised the topic of the show’s negative reception, asking her guest as to how she personally navigated and continues to navigate the series’ more aggressive and unproductive criticisms.
In turn, Maslany asserted, “I don’t know because to this day, my comments on my Instagram back 40 weeks ago, they like to go in all over there. For me, what’s so exciting is that Jessica Gao knew that was going to happen.”
“She wrote it into the show,” she opined. “There’s something in She-Hulk that is looking out, and she’s aware of the camera. She’s aware of somebody watching her. There’s something about the inherent quality to that character that is self-aware and that understands her place within the MCU or within a series or a TV show or a scene or whatever, just like Jennifer Walters is aware of her place within the legal system and how she’s struggling as a woman to be taken seriously or to be respected.”
But regardless, Maslany ultimately noted that she pays very little mind to the negativity, as “there are so many more interesting things that I can look to than vitriolic fan response where people don’t like it or just want to be mean and use you as a dumping ground for their worst thoughts.”
“But again, like you were saying, there are people who I meet at conventions who are like, ‘I love that show,’ or, ‘I’ve been reading She-Hulk since I was a kid, and the story of the show is exactly what she was like.’” she concluded. “You just remember that stuff and then you work through it. It’s a constant thing.”
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