Quintessa Swindell Is Asking the Big Questions
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You know, we're nearly 30 Marvel movies deep now. Decent amount of DC films out there in the wilderness, too. More often than not, nowadays, it feels like we're getting a couple of copy-paste jobs between superhero jams. Cut corners. So when I talked to Quintessa Swindell—who's set to play Maxine Hunkel, AKA Cyclone, in DC's Black Adam—just before they flew out to Comic-Con last week, I asked them if there was something, anything different about Cyclone. Please.
"The way Cyclone moves is so sick," Swindell says. "The way that her powers come out is through dance. So every movement, for me, was inspired by Isadora Duncan. In the '20s, she was the butterfly woman. If you look it up, it's insane. When you look at the butterfly dance—it's the biggest number that she's done and is most famous for—that is pretty much how Cyclone moves."
A capes and costumes movie basing a character's powers on a dancer from 100 years ago? Can we get more of that? Looking ahead to the next year of our superhero slate, it might just be Black Adam that sneaks up on us in a good way. The film, which stars Swindell alongside relative newcomer Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, follows Black Adam—a man imbued with god-like powers in Ancient Egypt, then imprisoned for 5,000 years. When he wakes up, the guy turns out to be a bit of an antihero, crossing paths with the Justice Society of America, which counts the likes of Swindell's Cyclone and Noah Centineo's Atom Smasher amongst its ranks. But here, don't let us have all the fun of getting you excited—let them tell you why you might just have a new favorite superhero this October.
ESQUIRE: Quintessa, how are you? What's up?
QS: I'm doing good. I don't even know. I had my fitting for Comic-Con yesterday and that is so bomb. It's been so wild because we've just been anticipating this movie for a year now. Since I started shooting, it's just been like, fuck—I want to see it.
It does feel like we’ve known about Black Adam for so long now. It must be a trip, finally doing press.
Even when we were shooting it, I remember the first time me and Noah [Centineo] hung out. When we first got into Atlanta, we were walking and Noah's just like, "Yo, this is crazy. We're super heroes.” And I was like, "I was going to say the same thing." There would be days I wasn't even working, but I would just want to go to the set. Every single day has just been so inspiring.
I mean, if I was you, I would ask The Rock if I could watch one workout. Just sit on a bench and witness it.
I feel like even watching Dwayne work out, I wouldn't even have the endurance for that. I'd get winded.
What can you tell us about your character?
So it’s Cyclone, Maxine Hunkel. Her and Atom Smasher are the two newest members of the JSA and they both come from superhero lineage. There's this element with both of us, stepping into these roles that have been filled previously by such inspiring, vivacious characters. This is our first chance to continue that. With Noah, we're so different, but seeing us work together, as far as our characters go, we're so alike in a way that we're still trying to figure out the superhero thing.
For my character, there's a bit of a shift throughout the film, where everything in the beginning is very light and airy and there's so much excitement about being a part of this group, and finally finding a place where Cyclone can use her powers. But over the course of the film, there is this question of, well, who has the right to save whom? It’s not black and white, which overall, is something that DC characters do so well. Every character seems vigilante-like. No one's this perfect version of a superhero. That drew me to the character too. When you get into a position of power—how do you utilize it in a justifiable way?
I feel like, in everyone's attempt to keep reinventing the wheel, we've stopped exploring those very core things. Like, what heroism means.
Actually, yeah. That's surprisingly what this film represents in its entirety.
I'm endlessly fascinated with how each movie has to do something different now, because we're so long into this superhero renaissance. Is there anything in Black Adam we’ve never seen before?
Literally everything. I've watched every single superhero movie. And everything involving a lot of CGI. From what I've seen of the film, it's unique—and the characters are unique. We're just so different, we function differently. Also, the secret about the film is the fact that every single person cared about it so much. Everyone was just so taken by what it represented because there was something that it represented. It wasn't just something that was big for the sake of being big. It asks a lot of really important questions. Seeing that from the producers was also so inspiring. It's like damn, if you have a creative vision and you really stick to it and can actively showcase what that vision looks like in real time, the way they did, it's just like, wow.
You have to remember, too, that audiences are smart. They have bullshit detectors. They’ll pick up on that.
Sometimes people take the audience for granted, in general. And especially now more than ever, it's like, oh, let's just keep on feeding people bullshit because they won't really see past it. People pay attention. Movie-goers, people who truly love film, comics, and this world, they pay attention. So it's nice making something for people who will pay attention to it.
Even for me, I've worked in my apartment for three years, and I was at Comic-Con’s press preview, waiting in line for a Tamagotchi. There's this guy next to me. I got a Toy Story, Woody Tamagotchi, which is—
What?
I know.
No way.
Make sure you go to that one. It’s a cool booth.
That's so cool.
There was a guy next to me, who must have only been in there for 20 minutes and he had these huge shopping bags full of merch, Gremlins stuff. It just reminds you that people really fucking care.
It's people's world. I don't know, watches are people's thing. Designer clothes are people's things.. The world's full of so many microcosms of niche little groups. And that's a really exciting thing, too. And to keep on learning about it, it's been really fun, honestly.
Best of luck this weekend, Quintessa—I hope you get a Tamagotchi.
Me too.
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