When
Iman Vellani watches herself as the title character in “
Ms. Marvel,” she cannot
help but feel a sense of disbelief. Before this Disney+ series came her way,
she was a high school senior with a seemingly impossible dream to be in a
Marvel project — now she is playing one of its powerful costumed champions,
just like some of the actors she has spent her life idolizing.
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At times,
Vellani said it was hard to connect her present-day self with the person she
sees on the show. “I look so young,” she said recently. “I feel different now.
I feel like I’ve matured 20 years.”
To be clear,
Vellani had turned 18 when she filmed “Ms. Marvel,” and she is 19 now.
For all the
experience Vellani has gained from the series, she knows she will still be
underestimated for her age and her status as a newcomer whose greatest
concerns, not all that long ago, were writing term papers and applying to
colleges.
But none of that
has discouraged Marvel from placing her at the center of its latest superhero
adventure.
“Ms. Marvel,”
based on the comic-book series, tells the story of Kamala Khan, a Jersey City
high schooler who admires the Marvel superheroes from afar — until she is
mysteriously granted powers that allow her to fight alongside them.
When the character
was given her own comics series in 2014, Khan was a crucial part of Marvel’s
effort to diversify its publishing lineup — she was a rare protagonist who was
Muslim and Pakistani American. Now “Ms. Marvel” offers a similar potential for
wider representation in the ever-expanding behemoth that is the
Marvel Cinematic Universe.
In mid-May,
Vellani was speaking in a video interview from Los Angeles as part of her
first-ever round of media promotion. Only two years prior, she was in high
school in Markham, Ontario, where her family had emigrated from Karachi when
she was about a year old.
Though she was
just five when the first MCU movie, “Iron Man,” was released, Vellani has grown
up to be the type of zealous Marvel devotee who blithely confesses that her three
favorite people in the world are Robert Downey Jr, Billy Joel, and Marvel
Studios president Kevin Feige.
No one knew who I was,
When she
auditioned for her high school’s drama department at age 13, Vellani said then
that her dream role would be anything in the MCU. A few years later, she came
to school for Halloween dressed in a Ms. Marvel costume she had made with her
grandmother.
“No one knew who
I was,” Vellani said. “Everyone thought I was the Flash. So, I had to buy a
comic book and hold it with me.”
At a certain
point in her studies, the precocious teen had soured on becoming a professional
actor. “When you’re in a room with 15-year-old kids who all think they’re
Daniel Day-Lewis, it’s like the worst place to be in,” she said. “You
immediately hate drama.”
But her curiosity
was reignited when she learned of an opportunity to try out for “Ms. Marvel.”
“My aunt opened a group chat that she never opens and someone had forwarded
this casting call through WhatsApp that she sent to me,” Vellani explained. “It
was the most brown way this could have happened.”
Compared to
long-12 standing Marvel heroes like
Captain America (who predates the US’
entrance into World War II) or Spider-Man (introduced in 1962), Kamala Khan is
a youngster.
She was created
less than a decade ago by a team that included Sana Amanat, who was a Marvel
publishing editor before becoming a production and development executive at the
studio and an executive producer on “Ms. Marvel.”
In conversations
with her then-colleague Stephen Wacker, who also helped create the character,
Amanat said she expressed a desire for a heroine who, like herself, was Muslim
and a child of Pakistani immigrants. Amanat said she wanted her stories to
reflect “some of the tribulations of being an awkward brown teenager — going to
prom by myself, fasting and playing basketball or lacrosse, wearing tights
underneath my shorts in 90-degree weather.”
In her earliest
comics, written by G. Willow Wilson and illustrated by artists that included
Adrian Alphona and Jamie McKelvie, Khan deliberately sought to model herself on
Captain Marvel, the superhero alter ego of Carol Danvers.
That narrative
choice, Amanat said, was meant to illustrate a real-life dynamic that she had
experienced in her youth.
“For a person of
color,” she said, “you look outside and who are the people that you’re
worshipping and want to be like? They look nothing like you. Captain Marvel is
really emblematic of that — she’s blonde, blue-eyed and tall. And so the story
spun from there.”
Bisha K. Ali,
who is the head writer and an executive producer of the “Ms. Marvel” television
series, said she faced competing goals in her adaptation of the comics: to
preserve the parts of Khan’s character and her world that readers already
appreciate, and to help viewers establish connections to her for when she makes
further MCU appearances — which she is already slated to do in “The Marvels,” a
new movie planned for 2023 release.
“The challenge
was really, what do we pick?” said Ali, who was also a writer on Marvel’s
“Loki” TV series. “What do we choose that will set this person up for being in
the MCU — being part of this huge, global media phenomenon, but also feels
intimate and personal and vital?”
some of the tribulations of being an awkward brown teenager — going to prom by myself, fasting and playing basketball or lacrosse, wearing tights underneath my shorts in 90-degree weather
Ali said she
approached “Ms. Marvel” as the story of a person discovering who she is: “All superheroes
have powers,” she said. “But if someone in their heart knows themselves,
there’s so much empowerment in that, especially for someone from a historically
marginalized group.”
As Vellani cleared the various stages of her casting
process in early 2020 — providing a headshot; submitting a self-taped audition;
traveling to Marvel’s offices in
Los Angeles for an on-camera test — her future
colleagues found themselves charmed by her enthusiasm and her guilelessness.
(“Not only is Iman an incredible new talent,” her hero Feige wrote in an email,
“but she’s also a huge fan of the MCU who knows and loves this character as
much as anyone at Marvel Studios.”)
“I think of my nieces and my goddaughters and my friends’ kids,” she said. “I think about them growing up and having Iman Vellani, out in the world, wearing a superhero outfit, and it’s really amazing to me. They’ve never had this.”
Now Vellani must
reckon not only with the benefits of playing a Marvel superhero but also the
drawbacks — not least of which is a subset of audience members who regard any
effort to depict diversity as an infringement on past tradition and register
their outrage on social media.
Asked if she had
encountered this strain of criticism in her time at Marvel, Amanat gave a
knowing chuckle. “Oh boy,” she said. “Don’t look for my name on YouTube — it’s
not a good idea.”
Such backlash
“is just the nature of the business,” Amanat said. She added, “I don’t
understand why the toy box is so small. We’re not taking anything away from
Captain America — we’re over here doing our own thing. It makes me a little sad
and a little frustrated.”
Even so, Amanat
said projects like “Ms. Marvel” were important to an audience that is not
accustomed to seeing themselves in entertainment franchises.
“I think of my
nieces and my goddaughters and my friends’ kids,” she said. “I think about them
growing up and having Iman Vellani, out in the world, wearing a superhero
outfit, and it’s really amazing to me. They’ve never had this.”
Vellani was more
circumspect in how she talked about this criticism of the Ms. Marvel character.
“I’m not on
social media, so I haven’t encountered anything directly,” she said. “You can’t
make everyone happy, and that’s not our goal, anyway. That’s just setting
yourself up to fail.”
She added, “If I go to
work every day thinking, ‘I’m the first Muslim superhero,’ I’m never going to
get anything done.”
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