Helen Mirren, the great villain of ‘Shazam 2’: “there are only two movies that I regret having rejected”

With a career that spans six decades and at a professional and vital moment in which his priority is to enjoy his experience and the opportunities that come his way, Helen Mirren shows her most playful side in ‘Shazam! The fury of the gods’the first of the three blockbusters that will premiere this 2023. The perfect opportunity to chat with her to take stock of what it means to embody a villain on screen and the consequences of the changes in recent years.

The woman of iron

People say that When Helen Mirren (London, 1945) was 23 years old, a palmist read her palm and predicted that she would not succeed until she was twice that age. We do not know the certainty of this urban legend, one more among the dozens of anecdotes that surround this great Lady of the British interpretation, some of which are verifiable. Like the one that accounts for her Russian aristocratic lineage and her family’s link to tsarism. Or the one that points out that her maternal great-grandfather was Queen Victoria’s butcher. Not forgetting her furious beginnings at the Royal Shakespeare Company and Peter Brook’s International Center for Theater Research or her bravery in confronting and standing up to sexist questions long, long before #MeToo broke out. What we do know is that it was in 1991, the year she turned 46, that Mirren became a star. And it was thanks to a series, ‘Prime Suspect’, translated during its passage through our country as ‘Principal suspect’ and right now not available on any platform. Not because he hadn’t previously shown his worth both on stage and in front of the camera, as proven by his work in titles such as ‘The Long Good Friday’ (J. Mackenzie, 1980) or ‘The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and His lover’ (P. Greenaway, 1989), among many others. The series gave him popularity and, with it, the possibility of changing course.

“It was very important,” Mirren tells PHOTOGRAMS. “When I started I wanted to be Sarah Bernhardt or Eleonora Duse. I dreamed of being a great classical theater actress and that’s what I devoted myself completely to during the first years of my career. Play Jane Tennison“, he says of the role he played in the series, “it allowed me to leave behind the characters that I had been chaining years ago and that, due to age, I could no longer assume. That role changed the way people saw me at that time and allowed me to start a new stage”. A phase that started in 2006, coinciding with the seventh and final season of ‘Prime Suspect’, when ‘The Queen’ (S Frears, 2006) changed everything again.

LET ME ENTERTAIN YOU

For some time now, Mirren says she has lost part of the solemnity and consideration with which she took her job years ago: “I think I don’t take everything as seriously as before, which has given me an extra point of freedom. Of course I want dramas that continue to excite me, inspire me, and make me learn. I have realized that I love entertainment“.

And there is his recent passage through the ‘Fast & Furious’ saga, whose tenth installment will premiere in May, or the film that gives rise to our talk, ‘Shazam! The fury of the gods’, to prove it. In this latest film, she plays Hespera, one of the three daughters of Atlas and, according to her role in the film, the rightful owner of the powers that are transmitted to Billy Batson (Asher Angel), the boy who becomes the Titan Shazam played by Zachary Levi. Mirren is thus the big baddie of this sequel although, as she points out, “there is no villain who thinks he is the bad guy in the movie. They believe that they are absolutely right and that everyone should recognize it. That is its main feature. And if not, they believe that they have an absolute right to act and behave the way they do. Even more so in the case of Hespera because she…she is a goddess! How is she not going to believe that she is right and justified in acting the way she acts?” she laughs.

A change of record that Mirren –who already played the vile Morgana in ‘Excalibur’ (J. Boorman, 1981)– does not see as radical as that of other actors that the public had labeled as heroes, the case of Henry Fonda in ‘Until that his time has come’ (S. Leone, 1968), Harrison Ford in ‘What the truth hides’ (R. Zemeckis, 2000) or Tom Hanks in ‘Elvis’ (B. Luhrmann, 2022). “Now that’s a shock to viewers, to see someone like that go over to the dark side. The system is broken. Our hero is actually a depraved!“, he laughs. “It’s a powerful dramatic twist that adds value to the plot. But from the interpreter’s point of view, and more so for someone who has always embodied kindness, tenacity and justice like Harrison, It’s great fun to take a walk on the wilder side of life from time to time.. It is not my case, because my career has been different. I have done theater, cinema, TV… I have played many different kinds of roles and there is a very diverse mix in my curriculum”.

77 IS THE NEW 30

A range of works that, last year, the American Actors Guild recognized with an award for his career. An award that valued more than 40 years of trade of which, he says, “There are only a couple of movies that I regret turning down. And I won’t say what they are“, warns between firm and joker. “Even today I do not understand why I said no. I was stupid. Prejudices, I suppose, that seen now are completely ridiculous. But it’s the law of life: I’ve said no to projects that I should have said yes to, and I’ve said yes to others that I should have let go of,” she laughs. “Mistakes are part of life, not just life. professional. The best thing you can do is accept it and move on.”

A mentality that pushes her to pursue new challenges, something that has not changed: “I am still excited to see what I will do next. It is clear that the challenges have changed, because I am older and the characters are different from those of 20 or 30 years ago. But I still think I’m very lucky… And also a little unfortunate, because I wish I was born later. Not because I’m younger, but because I think that the stage and the options for actresses have changed upside down in the last 15 years and I’m too old.. I wish I was 30 years old and could enjoy all the possibilities that my young colleagues have today. The roles and scripts they offer us are a thousand times better. Despite that, the thing is that I’m still alive,” she laughs. “And thanks to this new reality for women in the industry, new opportunities have arisen for actresses my age. Four decades ago, my career would have been over once I turned 40 or 45. It’s not like that now. I feel lucky to at least be a part of it and benefit from it.”

There’s your packed schedule to prove it. Like ‘Golda’, the biopic of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir that she is presenting at the Berlinale; the recently announced ‘Switzerland’, a criminal drama by Anton Corbijn in which she will play Patricia Highsmith, or ‘Barbie’, one of the highlights of this summer of cinema. “Oh, Barbie! In it I play myself for the first time in my life. It’s me, Helen Mirren. With my voice, my accent, my sensitivity… It was quite an experience that I have to thank Greta Gerwig for. It’s going to be very funny and very pink,” she says. “What no one expects is that, under that pastel wrapper, it’s going to be very radical“.

POWERS IN FAMILY

‘Shazam! The fury of the gods’. Second film of the titan created by Bill Parker and CC Beck, which comes at a convulsive moment in DC Comics. A commitment to family entertainment that follows an unwritten law: all sequels have to be darker than the first installment. Something that director David F. Sandberg (Jönköping, Sweden, 1981) confirms because “the plot gets more serious. Shazam’s powers come from the Greek gods, and the Daughters of Atlas claim them because they believe they were stolen. There are dark moments, but without losing sight of the fact that our hero is a boy. A boy who dreams of being Superman and who now has his family by his side, also with powers. We will see them learn. control them and fight against gods and all kinds of mythological creatures”.

“With the plot in place, we wondered who could play Hespera. We thought Helen Mirren would be perfect, so we approached her thinking she would say no and move on to a more realistic option. The surprise was that she said yes.” laughs Sandberg. “After her came Lucy Liu and Rachel Zegler to play her sisters. We had to restrain Helen on set: she wanted to do all the action scenes!“

The arrival of James Gunn at the head of the DC Comics film division has caused an earthquake that, says Sandberg, “has not affected us. The film was already finished and Shazam has always been a free verse. With nods to the rest of the characters, but always in his corner. I know something of what’s to come, but let the fans trust: if James can pull off a good ‘Dawn of the Dead’ remake (Z. Snyder, 2004), he can handle this.”