Did Marvel stop Elizabeth Olsen from becoming Yorgos Lanthimos’ muse?
Given how much her turn as Wanda Maximoff in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has boosted her standing in Hollywood, you’d think Elizabeth Olsen wouldn’t have a single regret about how things have shaped up over the past decade.
The role, which has her stepping into the shoes of the Scarlet Witch, has seen her pop up in seven films across the Marvel universe since 2014, not to mention leading three TV series as the character. As a result, Olsen’s become a bit of a household name – and rightly so – winning over the die-hard Marvel mob that comes with the territory.
The only issue is, actors can quite often crave diversity in their roles, and approaching almost a dozen projects playing the same character doesn’t offer much scope for switching things up and attempting to work on other projects that might have a different mood. There are plenty of other roles that an actor with Olsen’s talents would be able to pull off, but it’s unfortunate that her other commitments can often get in the way of her branching out to star in more artistically adventurous and personally enriching acting roles.
As a result, Olsen had to turn down the opportunity to appear in Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’ 2015 breakthrough film, The Lobster, and because appearing in a black comedy from a director who was slowly becoming known for his unique style would have taken her on a completely different trajectory in her career, it’s for her to not look back on rejecting this job as the moment where she effectively made the decision to fully commit herself to appearing in superhero films for the next decade.
Olsen would have easily been able to fill the role of Rachel Weiss, but considering Lanthimos’ preference to consistently work with the same cast members, this could have also led to her being recruited to take what would eventually become Weiss’ role in his Academy Award-nominated 2018 masterpiece The Favourite. This also happened to be the first time that Lanthimos worked alongside Emma Stone, who has subsequently appeared in the starring role of his next three films: Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness and Bugonia.
If Olsen had not refused the role in The Lobster, it’s entirely possible that she could have become Lanthimos’ muse in the same way that Stone has in recent years, and it’s understandable that she has always felt a level of discontent at not being able to accept roles in more artistically-minded films. “I started to feel frustrated,” she claimed in a 2022 interview with the New York Times. “I had this job security but I was losing these pieces that I felt were more part of my being. And the further I got away from that, the less I became considered for it.”
While Olsen’s career has taken off in a positive way since taking on her first role in a Marvel film, they have ultimately restricted her from appearing in a wider variety of films, and while she doesn’t necessarily regret making this decision back in 2014, we could have seen Olsen’s career end up taking a completely different direction.
