The movie Uma Thurman knew was doomed from the start: “I have this perverse nature”
Uma Thurman has had a career dotted with spurts of both huge and slightly less overwhelming critical success, with Mia Wallace becoming an icon of the 1990s and ‘The Bride’ being used as a symbol of Quentin Tarantino’s “feminist” leanings. Amongst working with auteurs like Lars von Trier and Paul Schrader, she has also had her fair share of flops and near-misses, whether it be her role as Poison Ivy or her recent string of Netflix originals.
But sometimes the worst projects are the most fun to star in, with many awful films surprisingly looking extremely entertaining to be a part of.
It could be Olivia Colman’s role in the abysmal final Paddington film, in which you eventually come to the realisation that it would be impossible to turn down the chance to play an evil nun while shooting in the Peruvian jungle, or it could be any Adam Sandler movie from the early 2000s, with comically nonsensical plot lines that somehow manage to carry on to the end in one piece. But for Thurman, there was one film in particular that was perhaps met most poorly by critics, despite being a blast to film and allowing her to goof out with one of her favourite actors.
The Avengers, directed by Jeremiah S Chechik in 1998, follows a secret agent and a doctor who attempt to stop an arch-nemesis from executing his diabolical plans after obtaining a weather-control machine. It’s an extremely camp and ridiculous movie, with Fiennes cast as a twee man in a suit while Thurman races around in an entirely leather one. It’s over-the-top in nearly every possible way, and while it might not be everyone’s cup of tea, you can’t deny that the cast certainly had fun with it while it lasted.
When discussing the film, however, Thurman revealed how she and Fiennes had very different expectations for how it would pan out, saying, “We had a good time, but we realised almost from the first day on set that we wouldn’t be achieving much on an artistic level with our performances. The film is too campy, and we don’t test any serious emotional chords or depths. We were both disappointed at first that there wouldn’t be more of a challenge.”
Thurman has surprisingly had a few roles akin to this during the latter part of the ’90s, with her as Poison Ivy being equally slammed for its camp ridiculousness. When asked about this streak of non-serious films, Thurman explained her choices, saying, “I probably could have done more in terms of choosing better films, but I have this perverse nature about trying to challenge myself by taking parts which no one would expect me to choose and see how I measure up.”
Sometimes it is more challenging to work on something that no one expects, especially with such a strong spotlight on you and certain expectations about what you should do next. The industry likes to predict what the stars will do next, but perhaps the biggest curveball is choosing something that nobody thinks is possible.
