Doctor Strange 2: Benedict Cumberbatch Helped Elizabeth Olsen By Complimenting WandaVision
Did you really think we were done discussing WandaVision? Can one really stop discussing any Marvel Studios project when one leads right into another? I mean, technically this is an article about Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Doctor Strange 2). But with the connection between the stories assumed to be so close, it’s hard to discuss one without the other.
In Rollings Stone‘s ‘Oral History of WandaVision,’ Elizabeth Olsen admits she was nervous coming into Doctor Strange 2, but star Benedict Cumberbatch eased her nerves, in part by complimenting WandaVision:
He had really positive things to say about how the show ended up. They showed it to him, I think, before it all aired. I didn’t really know what was happening in Dr. Strange until just before we got back to shooting [the film] during the pandemic in September. That was my first time getting to hear my role. And I was a little nervous that I wouldn’t be able to change certain things in WandaVision in order to support what’s going to happen in Dr. Strange. For any actor, that lack of control can be tough. But he said it is really this perfect journey that you watch her go through, in order to be invested in Dr. Strange, too. So that made me feel good, because I do feel that way myself. I feel we’ve managed to make it make a lot of sense.
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Olsen added that playing the character first in WandaVision also helped her nerves:
WandaVision also made me feel more confident playing her. Working on Dr. Strange immediately after, I just feel like my instincts are right. It feels the way you want to feel all the time, which is kind of hard when you have such little screen time and everything that’s happening not on the page is in your head and not in the writer’s head. But what was really satisfying with this whole project was when Jac was pitching it to me, it was as if the answers that I had in my head just as an actress somehow magically made it to her brain without me having to verbalize them to her.
I am super stoked to see The Scarlet Witch in Doctor Strange 2. And, as we wait… more WandaVision stories!
Maybe.