We speak with Natalie Portman, the Mighty Thor from Taika Waititi’s ‘Love and Thunder’ for Marvel and heiress to Chris Hemsworth’s hammer.
Natalie Portman has the power. And not only that, but also the powerful and magical hammer Mjolnir. The actress has it all again in ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ to consecrate herself as the goddess of blockbuster movies in her stellar, and empowered, return to the Marvel superhero universe from the hand of Taika Waititi.
“If I’m honest Jane Foster for me was already the past. Something beautiful that I thought she could no longer contribute anything to me as an actress. New female characters such as Captain Marvel or Black Widow emerged, but Jane had remained as the damsel to the rescue of that Nordic god with whom she had a sentimental tug-of-war in which she did not have the last word.
Natalie Portman (Jerusalem, 1981) seemed to have closed her time at Marvel (without a contract with the studio) with a sort of bittersweet goodbye similar to her detachment from Padmé Amidala from the second (yes, it’s the first) trilogy of Star Wars. “Of course I have good memories of that 2011 and the debut in Kenneth Branagh’s Thor. The mixture between Nordic mythology and Shakespearean show was something irresistible, as much as sharing a set with Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston or Stellan Skarsgård, with whom I have worked a lot and who is a close friend, but Jane Foster just waiting for Thor to rescue her was not what I considered an acceptable future“.
THE WAITITI EFFECT
That an actress who had won an Oscar for ‘Black Swan’ (Darren Aronofsky, 2010) and received the highest praise for putting herself in the shoes of JFK’s widow in ‘Jackie’ (Pablo Larraín, 2016) decided to become the scientific ‘girlfriend’ of the god of thunder in ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’, despite his reluctance, there is only one person responsible: Taika Waititi. “In ‘Thor: Ragnarok,’ Taika took the story into some very fun and exciting territory,” Portman confesses. “It was all very different and I was, of course, Valkyrie, just the character I would love to have played. When I met Tessa Thompson, her alter ego on screen, shooting ‘Annihilation’ (AlexGarland, 2018), confirmed all my positive suspicions about Taika and his vision of the plot arc of Thor and company. Would Jane be in this?”
THE FIGHTER JANE
“Taika came to my house to convince me to come back as Jane Foster,” the actress is encouraged to tell. “I thought, he’s going to find out about this one now! But he had it all won with his visit: my children’s favorite character in the MCU is Korg, the stone humanoid who embodies Waititi himself, so I wasn’t going to be able to deny him almost anything. And less when he asked me what this new one was going to be like Jane, turned into the powerful female version of Thor. A fighter who makes her own decisions, she chooses her destiny, battles for him and deals with the son of Odin.. And of course he uses Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir. It’s not silly to wear it: you have to know how to handle it, adapt your movements to its weight and its power… I think it’s really magical!”
FEAR AND FUN
“With Taika Waititi you’re always on your toes,” Portman gleefully recalls. “His shoots are open to improvisation, but above all to great camaraderie and collaboration. between the entire artistic and technical team. Even in the most terrifying sequences, which are the one in which Christian Bale appears as Gorr, the Butcher of Gods, Taika had just the right comment to lower the tension and return us to what the film is really about: a celebration of life, of the power that we all have beyond being gods or not. A letter of love, respect and admiration towards a woman. towards all women“.
Source: Fotogramas
Camila Luna is a writer at Gossipify, where she covers the latest movies and television series. With a passion for all things entertainment, Camila brings her unique perspective to her writing and offers readers an inside look at the industry. Camila is a graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in English and is also a avid movie watcher.
