Julia Garner (Wolf Man) recently sat down with Entertainment Weekly to give some insight on her take on the mysterious Silver Surfer in Fantastic Four: The First Steps.
Like many fans with only casual knowledge of the comics and past films from Marvel and Fox, she assumed the Silver Surfer was a male character—but then admitted, “I was just like, ‘Okay, well, I’ll play anything.’”
It helped that she was already a “big fan” of Fantastic Four director Matt Shakman. “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 [the film’s Silver Surfer is] actually Shalla-Bal and that whole thing.”
Garner learned more about this version of the Silver Surfer after reading the script for the film, though she couldn’t reveal too much. “It’s going to be really interesting … it was described as, there’s this mystery about her, and there’s this sense of this ambiguous energy going on of whether she’s good or not. She is the herald of Galactus, so she works for Galactus, but you’re not sure where she stands. Does she stand with her boss, or is she just doing what she’s told? She has this mysterious energy about her, and slowly that mystery will get solved with the audience throughout watching it.”
Diving into the comic-book history of Shalla-Bal was important for Garner—though in Marvel Studios latest, things get switched up a bit for the character. “What makes this version different is that the movie is just different. First of all, I’m a woman, so that’s already different, and that hasn’t been told before. This Silver Surfer feels more mysterious in a way, even how it was written, than the other ones. Also, just the world feels so different with the 1960s retro futurism going on. The audience is going to get a completely different experience with this movie, so they’ll have a clean palette.”
She continued, deliberately vaguely: “All I can say is that she works for Galactus and that she’s mysterious, and the character will unfold more towards the end of the movie. That’s all I can say. I know it’s a very Marvel tease, but also it’s like a real tease. I haven’t seen the movie myself!”
Fantastic Four: The First Steps opens July 25.
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