They’re the new kids on the block. Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch or…twins Pietro and Wanda Maximoff if you will. You got your first peek at Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen in the mid-credit scene during Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Now they’re back with key roles in The Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Before heading to LA, I got my first clues that Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were going to be a big deal to the fans. Every mention of Avengers Event on Twitter was met with tons of questions for both stars. And a lot of anxiety because fans can’t stop looking at rumor sites for spoilers. Come on…it’s more fun if you don’t know going in, right?
No spoilers here. At least not until after you’ve had a chance to watch the movie yourself. You can wait until Friday, can’t you?
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We know Quicksilver is fast…but how did they create that onscreen?
Aaron: Yeah. That was pretty much what I did all day long. If in doubt, run. All the special effects [are] sped up. We’d shoot the scene-like if Lizzy was in the scene I’d run up to her. We’d shoot that. We did the dialogue and then we’d have to do a plate [shot] afterwards where she’d step out and I’d do the run up and then they would speed that up. It’s like a plate shot. All the running where there’s a blur, it was me behind it.
How did Aaron and Lizzy end up with their roles?
Elizabeth: We actually didn’t have an audition process… We both met with Joss separately… We finished filming Godzilla and then we both that summer got a phone call that was like you guys got the parts and we’re like whoa, okay and that was kind of it. It was really crazy and exciting and Aaron and I were really excited that we got to work with each other again… because in Godzilla we…didn’t really get to work with each other as much.
Aaron: Yeah, I mean because stepping onto the set seemed kind of, you know, it was such a big ensemble. It felt kind of daunting…to step on with Lizzy who we already had that kind of work relationship which made it feel a lot more comfortable.
What attracted them to the roles?
Elizabeth: I’m a fan of Marvel already… Then Scarlet Witch…I didn’t know who she was before hand and Joss was telling me about her and then we both asked for a lot of research on our characters and they gave us every comic book page that both of our characters have ever been on basically and it was this huge stack… I think she’s one of the coolest characters in the entire universe of Marvel. I think largely because of the House of M series because she’s…the most powerful person in the entire universe, X Men and Avengers combined. I think she’s really nuts too….It’s a lot to play with because it’s a lot of psychological stuff to play with instead of just it being physical.
Aaron: They have really cool super powers, but I…really wanted to explore who the character was behind Quicksilver and Pietro. [It] was kind of our main goal…to kind of bring it back to the origins and it was based in Sokovia, which is someplace in like Eastern Europe… We wanted to embrace that kind of accent and I really wanted to have this same kind of look from the comic books… Quicksilver, you know, wouldn’t he needed Scarlet Witch because…they balance off each other. They’re twins and they’re very much ying and yang in the way their personalities are… It kind of gave us a sense of …insecurity when they went with each other, or [a] kind of vulnerability. All they had was each other. So we kind of played around with everything that we could…visually see, what we could read and that was kind of fun. And Marvel [was] really open to suggestions and ideas and wanted to…do those characters justice so it felt very collaborative very early on.
What scene was the most emotionally challenging?
Elizabeth: The one that was the hardest one for me was when Scarlet Witch…can see what’s gonna happen…if Ultron has control over the Vision…My character just had to respond to something that is non existent most of the time because it just like popped into her head and…no one else felt it but I did. So…I have to have…some humongous reaction that is coming from nothing and so that always just kind of feels stupid until you really just go for it… There are a couple of moments where I had to be like oh, I just got this new information and…that kind of feels funny.
How was it playing Scarlet Witch when most of the powers are created in post production?
Elizabeth: Well, you know what it’s actually really fun because a lot of people have stunt doubles and my stuff is like a dance…so I can’t have like a stunt double come in and do that. I was like always doing everything….I even had to do like a triple flip back kick situation but I always got to be in control over my, my character’s body movements which was cool and it was fun because there’s no blueprint to how Scarlet Witch moves because you just see these like awesome finger, hand gestures and these circular red things… I worked with a movement coach and she and I watched Joss’s version of Scarlet Witch and that was really enjoyable to watch because he would do the motions and we would interpret it into our own thing but it was really fun… It was really fun to work with the dancer on something like that and it adds a different element to the fighting, a different visual element to the fighting. And it also felt…a little funny because you’re like I’m not making contact with anything, like literally zero contact. So, you just kind of trust that you’re gonna put a robot where my eyes [look] or something… There’s a lot of trust that goes in when you have special effects that I wasn’t used to and then after seeing the movie I was like aha, now I’m comfortable.
What was it like coming onto a set with such a well-established cast?
Aaron: Yeah, that was kind of the initial thing of oh, God everybody knows [each other], this is their fourth or fifth movie playing these characters. They’re pretty comfortable in that kind of situation and with each other and just understand the whole…mechanics of it because this movie is such a machine… It just keeps going and going and…you’re a small piece to the rubik’s cube and they said that you just have to trust with these guys but you’ve seen the quality of movies they’ve done before so you can have trust but it’s just you don’t quite understand… It feels slightly daunting but…it sort of very quickly becomes like a…family environment… With Lizzy it’s just like our characters are kind of combined so I can kind of rely on her and vice versa… In those sort of situations it’s just like we kind of feel slightly uncomfortable around the Avengers anyway, you know, so early on that we’re kind of…outsiders anyway. So I think it also kind of played within it.
What was it like for Aaron to play a character with real superpowers, rather than a vigilante like he did in Kick-Ass?
Aaron: It’s a lot more fun having powers for sure… They’re both really different characters with different dynamics but it’s a lot of fun having powers and doing these fight sequences… It’s the most exciting for me to see all of your favorite superheroes all fighting together as a team and they all have their different skillsets and they also collide into set with each other. It’s amazing to watch but also it’s amazing to do. We had the final fight sequence in Sokovia, [it] was this epic two or three week long shoot where they found a site that they were gonna bulldozer anyway with these towers and they pretty much did exactly that for them, blew up buildings and smashed up cars and the stunts that are involved are guys that do parkour and they’re gymnasts… it’s just the most incredible thing to be around and you just live off of that high. It’s gonna be a lot of fun.
Joss Whedon described Aaron as “too pretty to live” when we had a chance to interview him. He is not wrong. Just after we took this picture and it was time for Aaron and Lizzy to head out, I told them both thank you. Aaron shook my hand. He reached out and shook my hand. I touched Quicksilver… Yeah. We’ll just end on that note.
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Photo Credits: Louise Manning Bishop of MomStart