To the cast and crew of Marvel’s She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, the cameo from rap artist Megan Thee Stallion in the Disney Plus series’ latest episode may be one of the biggest highlights of the entire series – if not their entire lives.
The “WAP” artist made her Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in the series’ third episode, The People vs. Emil Blonsky, whose ‘B plot’ sees Jennifer Walters’ former co-worker, Dennis Bukowski, hire the superhuman law division of GLK&H for representation in suing his ex-girlfriend, a New Asgardian Light Elf named Runa, for having used her shape-shifting abilities to deceive him into thinking he was dating the real Megan.
Eventually, after a brief trial, a judge finds in favor of Bukowski, awarding him “full damages in the amount of $175,000” and sentencing Runa to two months in prison for her earlier attempt to impersonate him and have the case thrown out.
As the judge brings down his gavel and Runa starts to panic over her legal loss, the actual Megan is shown celebrating the ruling from the gallery, gleefully shouting, “That’s right! There’s only one Megan Thee Stallion!”
Though she is absent from the rest of the episode proper, Megan returns in the episode’s post-credits scene, wherein after signing on as Jen’s client, she and the Jade Giantess commemorate the partnership by twerking to the track Body from her album Good News.
wtf is marvel doing man pic.twitter.com/MVOSl4gXzh
— Geo (@Geo_AW) September 1, 2022
Following the episode’s premiere, series head writer Jessica Gao, director Kat Coiro, and star Tatiana Maslany spoke with Variety both about how Megan’s guest appearance came about, as well as how her personality was a perfect fit for the series.
Opening with a brief discussion of how the rapper found her way into the Jade Giantess’ life, Gao explained, “There was a big, varied list of different people that constantly changed.”
“And the type of celebrity really ebbed and flowed, too, depending on what kind of jokes we wanted to make,” she detailed.
Ultimately, thanks to a suggestion from Tatiana actress Jameela Jamil, who had co-hosted the HBO Max voguing reality show Legendary alongside the rapper, the team landed on Megan.
“[Megan] really fit into the whole ethos of what we’re doing with the show,” said Coiro of the decision. “She’s a really powerful, larger-than-life person, and we love the idea of She-Hulk looking up to her.”
With the team’s choice of cameo locked in place, word that she’d be working with Megan eventually made its way to Maslany, who said that when she heard the news, “I was probably pretty close to tears with excitement.”
“I’m such a big fan of hers,” declared the actress, whose claim was further backed up by Gao.
“It wasn’t just like she was a fan because she was about to meet [Megan],” the head writer noted. “She was a fan fan.”
Turning to the twerking scene itself, Maslany exuberantly asserted, “That was like the highlight of my life.”
“When Jess[ica Gao] was like, ‘We’re writing you a scene where you’re dancing with her,’ I basically died,” she recalled. “Like, I fell off the planet. I fixated on that moment for two weeks, and I couldn’t talk to her. I didn’t know how to be around her.”
An encouraging Coiro added, “We all discovered that not only is Tatiana a huge Megan fan, but she’s an amazing twerker and dancer.”
“It might be a CGI character, but that is all Tatiana in that moment,” she continued, noting that the pair’s twerking break was not a particularly choreographed affair. “We really just let them dance. We played the song, and we put a few cameras on them.”
Coiro also noted that during filming, “I had to keep telling the camera operators to go down. They were being very respectful. And I said, ‘Guys, you gotta point the camera down.’
Drawing the interview to an end, Maslany ultimately affirmed that “as soon as the song played, you just have to go.”
“I’ve been prepping for that my whole life,” she concluded. “She was amazing.”
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is now streaming on Disney Plus.