Julia Garner Dismisses Sexist Backlash to Her ‘Fantastic Four’ Role: ‘Gonna Still Do My Job’

Julia Garner didn’t pay much mind to all the sexist backlash to her casting as the Silver Surfer in The Fantastic Four: First Steps.

After Garner’s involvement in the new Marvel film made headlines, fans claimed the Silver Surfer character should be male. “Another flop for Disney,” one fan wrote online, per the Daily Mail. “Ehm, isn’t Silver Surfer a man? Another film ruined,” said another.

But the Ozark alum wasn’t rattled. “Well, you know. I was like, ‘I’m just gonna still do my job,” she said in a BBC News interview, looking into the camera as she told off the haters. “And also, it’s Shalla-Bal, so it’s different.”

 

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As Garner noted, Shalla-Bal is a female character in Marvel comics, an empress of the world Zenn-La and an ill-fated lover of Silver Surfer alter-ego Norrin Radd. In Marvel’s Earth X series of comic books, however, Shalla-Bal becomes the Surfer herself.

Garner previously told Entertainment Weekly she knew the “basics of certain comic book characters” before signing on to the Fantastic Four project, which is why she was “in disbelief” when she got the call to play the Silver Surfer.

“I knew who the Silver Surfer was, and I got to know the Silver Surfer more when I signed on to the project,” she said. “I really dived in. I read a lot of the Fantastic Four and Silver Surfer comics before starting the project, and I knew that this Fantastic Four was going to be told in a very different way than even the other movies.

And the three-time Emmy winner was only familiar with the Norrin Radd version of the Surfer. “I was confused because I was like, ‘Wait, isn’t the Silver Surfer a man?’” she recalled. “I was just like, ‘Okay, well, I’ll play anything.’ [Laughs] I was a very big fan of [director Matt Shakman], so there was already, in my mind, like, ‘I should probably meet with Matt Shakman because he’s a very smart director and I love his work.’ And then he was explaining to me that it’s actually Shalla-Bal and that whole thing.”

The Fantastic Four: First Steps, In Theaters, Friday, July 25