Marvel Studios dropped the Black Widow trailer earlier this week, but surprisingly, lead actress Scarlett Johansson wasn’t in the loop.
Appearing on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to discuss her Netflix film Marriage Story, Johansson found herself chatting about her Marvel role after a friend clued her into the trailer’s release.
“Nobody told me it was coming out,” Johansson shared, recounting how her Avengers co-star Chris Evans texted her early in the morning with praise for the trailer. “I don’t know what he was doing up at 5 AM,” she laughed.
The Black Widow standalone film has been long-awaited by fans, marking Johansson’s return as Natasha Romanoff, a role she first played in Iron Man 2 (2010) before reprising it in multiple Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) films.
Johansson confirmed that Black Widow fills in Romanoff’s backstory between the events of Captain America: Civil War (2016) and Avengers: Infinity War (2018).
While some fans think the film should have happened sooner, Johansson sees it as timely. “I could not have told this movie 10 years ago,” she explained, attributing her journey with the character as essential to making Romanoff a “fully recognized woman.” She also described the film’s complexity as “delicious” and called it a “homecoming.”
During the interview, Colbert, a noted Marvel fan, proposed that Black Widow might be Johansson’s final portrayal of Romanoff, pointing out a “spider” theme with her eighth appearance in the MCU.
Though Colbert tried to confirm his theory, Johansson dodged, playfully admitting she avoided Marvel spoilers: “There’s someone out there with a dart gun that’s a Marvel representative, and I don’t want to let something slip.”
Black Widow is set to open in theaters on May 1, 2020.
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