‘Ms. Marvel’: Iman Vellani Shares How Brie Larson Helped Her Prepare for the MCU (VIDEO)
Ms. Marvel isn’t just Iman Vellani‘s breakout role — it’s her first role. In fact, the Marvel Disney+ series was the first thing she ever auditioned for. After landing her dream role of Kamala Khan, another dream came true: the Marvel superfan got advice from Marvel superheroes.
Vellani told Variety that Brie Larson helped her prepare for Ms. Marvel, as well as get ready for MCU fame and more. She also shared that Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings star Simu Liu and Eternals actor Kumail Nanjiani both reached out sharing their excitement over her casting — Liu via text and Nanjiani via Twitter. Larson’s help began with a Zoom call.
“She was the sweetest. I was really shy and I felt like everything I wanted to ask would have been stupid, but she didn’t make me feel like that,” Vellani said of her first conversation with the Captain Marvel star. “She has such a warm presence and made our Zoom call intimate, telling me all about her experience. She was like, ‘Seriously, if your mom needs to talk to my mom, we can make that happen. Anything you need.’ Any time I had any issue on set, I would text her and she’d make herself so available to answer my questions, as silly or small as they were.”
“She really wanted to be there for me, because even though she was already an established actor, being in Marvel changed her career forever,” Vellani continued. “The sheer amount of attention you get being a Marvel actor is completely unmatched to anything else in this industry, and she wanted to prep me for that mentally and hold my hand throughout it.”
Before her Marvel dreams came true, Vellani was just a regular Marvel-obsessed high schooler (her favorite hero is Iron Man). But when the Ms. Marvel auditions began, she thought the audition posting was a scam. Vellani appeared on Good Morning America on Wednesday, June 8, and revealed that she first heard of the opportunity through her aunt and WhatsApp.
“It’s honestly the brownest way this could’ve happened, too,” she said. “South Asians love WhatsApp and forwards. My aunt sent me a casting call that she got from a brown group chat. And now here we are. I thought it was a scam.”
#ImanVellani found out about the @msmarvel audition through WhatsApp and originally thought it was a scam! 🙈@disneyplus#MsMarvelhttps://t.co/kWY5S6eOU4 pic.twitter.com/wbmFxQMKWd
— Good Morning America (@GMA) June 8, 2022
She found out she got the role on her last day of school. While going out for burritos with her friends, Vellani got a text from the show’s casting director, Sarah Finn, asking her to jump on a quick video call. At first, the teen said no, because she was busy with her pals who had no idea she had even auditioned. She got on the call, but told herself she’d stifle her reaction. But then, Marvel producer Kevin Feige appeared on screen, and Vellani couldn’t contain her excitement.
“What happened? Did you, like, win the lottery?” Vellani said her friends asked.
“Basically,” Vellani replied, telling the GMA hosts, “We still got the burritos.”
Kamala Khan will next appear in The Marvels alongside Larson, Teyonah Parris (WandaVision), and more.
“Standing next to them, sharing a screen with them is so empowering,” she told Variety of filming the movie. “I didn’t want to be the one to continually just gush over them, so I had to hold back a little bit, because they took it very seriously, and I’m just like, ‘Oh my God, I’m in a movie.'”
Ms. Marvel, New Episodes, Wednesdays, Disney+
