‘The Marvels’ Star Teyonah Parris Cried When She Learned She Was an MCU Superhero

The rocky current state of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is partly due to its over-extension into too many streaming shows of varying quality — but at the same time, the best of those series have introduced some of the current MCU’s most promising characters. In the just-released The Marvels, the brightest spots are the new teammates who join Brie Larson’s Carol Danvers: Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) of Disney+’s Ms. Marvel, and Monica Rambeau, first played by Teyonah Parris on the single best MCU show, WandaVision. (The character, who’s had various superhero names in the comic books, including Pulsar and, yes, Captain Marvel, first appeared in the MCU as a child in 2019’s Captain Marvel, played by Akira Akbar.)

In an interview originally conducted for Rolling Stone‘s WandaVision oral history, the Juilliard-trained Parris — who also starred in Candyman and They Cloned Tyrone, and broke through playing Dawn Chambers on Mad Men —  looked back at what it was like to join the MCU and more.

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You said you first became aware of the character of Monica Rambeau in tweets from fans who wanted to see you play her, which is such a unique way to be introduced to something.
Yeah, it was five, six years ago. I kept getting hit with it on Twitter. And if you see it enough, you’re like, “Well, who is this?” And so it was Monica Rambeau. And I looked her up. And I was like, “Wow, she is amazing and has a really rich history in the comics.” But to be honest, she’s a woman and she’s a Black woman. So the likelihood that we would see her, in my opinion, at that time, was very slim. And so that was that. I was like, “Oh, thanks, guys. How sweet. And we’re gonna move on to more realistic, attainable dreams now.”

So then she showed up as a young girl in Captain Marvel, I thought, “Oh my gosh, wow. That’s the character that the fans have been talking about.” And what’s weird and crazy is that I never even thought, watching the movie Captain Marvel, that she would actually grow up and they might have to cast her as an adult. It never dawned on me. It really didn’t. So I enjoyed that movie, and I kind of just let it go. But essentially, it came back around and I auditioned for it. And then I found out I was Monica Rambeau. And that was a very surreal feeling.

Because you knew all the history, and what it meant to be cast as her, and that it was way more than just a role in WandaVision?
It was surreal because I’ve always wanted to be in the MCU. And I didn’t practically see how that would happen. So there was that: “Oh, my gosh, I’m a part of the MCU.” I didn’t know the character I would be playing. And then I found out it was Monica Rambeau, who is a total badass with a long legacy and a very beloved character in the comics, and I’m like, “Oh shoot, I get to play her.” Then there was the added element that this was the character fans wanted me to play.

And what made it all so surreal was that I didn’t know the extent of what they were going to do with Monica in WandaVision at that time because I didn’t have any scripts. I mean, they barely had told me the name of the show at this point when they told me I got the part. Maybe two months after I got the job, I saw the storyboards on the wall, and I see my face [digitally pre-visualized] into images of the action stuff — that moment when Monica is going through the hex, they had that storyboarded with my face. And it was just so overwhelming that I remember bursting into tears in that room in front of them. They got me tissues, and I’m in the hall walking around, and all of a sudden I see Kevin Feige, and he’s like, “What are you doing out here?” And I’m trying to compose myself.

What thoughts led to those tears?
I was thinking about my parents, their love, their encouragement, the low times where maybe you don’t book anything for a year and a half and you have no money. So I was just feeling the support and the love, and how there were so many people that got me to this moment. This was an actual dream, to be a Marvel superhero, and I’m here. I think it was also knowing that to be a woman and to be a black woman in this superhero space, it’s not very often we get to have that. So now I get to add to that narrative, to that representation, and to be a part of the imagery I wanted to see more of as a young girl. So there was a lot.

It’s a tricky thing to embody a character that we last saw as a child, and you’re obviously a different actress. And there was something about it that felt so seamless. I just fully believed from the first second I saw you that it was the same person. Was there anything specific as far as studying Akira Akbar’s performance in Captain Marvel that made it work so well?
I think [casting director] Sarah Finn just did an awesome job seeing the similarities between Akira Akbar and who I am, you know, the things that we have in common. I watched Akira in Captain Marvel, and I pulled from her sense of how smart she is, how she speaks up for herself, and how intuitive she was, even as a young child. And so I tried to bring some of those large, broad characteristics to who Monica is today. There’s a long time between where we first saw her and where I show up. As humans, we change with our experiences. While she might have been an open, free child, I had to figure out what happened to Monica in between that time and how it may have shaped who she is today — her experiences with Carol Danvers, her experiences with her mom, and now having lost her mom and not even being there for it, and her processing that grief. So we actually got to a lot of moments that would actually shape someone’s personality. So I just used things like that.

For anyone who grew up reading comics in a certain part of the Eighties, Captain Marvel was Monica Rambeau. You know, that was the first Captain Marvel I encountered.
Fans who have loved her for years or decades come up to me and let me know how special she is to them and what she meant to them growing up. And that’s pretty cool that she’s just been in people’s lives for so long. And the character is really beloved by many. And that’s awesome.

Have you thought about how you’re going to balance the MCU with the rest of your career?
I think I just will play it as it comes. I’m just approaching it with an open heart with gratitude and grace, and we’ll see what happens.

Finally, is Juilliard training still useful even you’re 50 feet in the air on a harness?
[Laughs] Oh man, Matt Shakman had a little running joke with me like, “Oh, did they teach you this at Juilliard?” Like when there was a green screen behind me and I was trying to act with nothing there. They did not teach me that at Juilliard. But there were other things and elements that were taught, which is ground your feet and just be in the moment, and that’s what I’m trying to do.

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