Julia Garner admits that she was just as confused as fans about her role as Silver Surfer in The Fantastic Four: First Steps. When most fans think of the Silver Surfer, they think of the Norrin Radd version, who has starred in several solo comics and appeared in titles like Fantastic Four and Avengers. The herald of Galactus even had a major part in 2007’s Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. But Garner will play Shalla-Bal, the female Silver Surfer, in The Fantastic Four: First Steps. She just needed to get over her confusion about Silver Surfer typically being a man.
Entertainment Weekly spoke to Julia Garner about The Fantastic Four: First Steps and Silver Surfer. Garner was asked if she knew she was being cast as Silver Surfer, or if that was kept a secret from her when she met with director Matt Shakman.
“No, I met up with Matt, who’s lovely. We met up at some restaurant in Burbank or something, I don’t even remember, but I knew it was for the Fantastic Four,” she said. “And then I was confused because I was like, ‘Wait, isn’t the Silver Surfer a man?’ I was just like, Okay, well, I’ll play anything.’ [Laughs] I was a very big fan of Matt’s, 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.”
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Garner then said that the way the meeting went, she wasn’t entirely sure she had nailed the casting. She added, “He wasn’t telling me a whole bunch about the movie, but we were talking a lot about the 1960s. Our meeting went all over the place, and I thought I wasn’t actually going to get the part because the meeting was all over the place. I was like, ‘I don’t know how he will hire me for this job.’ I mean, we were talking about communism, brutalist architecture, all this stuff. And then they were like, ‘You got it.’ I was like, ‘Wait, what?’ So I think that we vibed, but you never know, basically, is what I’m saying.”
The Fantastic Four: First Steps released its official trailer last week, giving fans the first look at Jennifer Garner as Silver Surfer. Shalla-Bal comes to Earth to warn the Fantastic Four that the planet has been marked for death by Galactus. Mister Fantastic (Pedro Pascal), who usually has an answer for everything, is left reeling for the first time in his life when he doesn’t have an answer for how to stop the Devourer of Worlds.
Garner teased that Silver Surfer’s allegiance to Galactus will be a running subplot throughout the movie. Is she really aligned with Galactus? Is she a hero or a villain? These are questions Fantastic Four will explore.
“It’s going to be really interesting — I have to be so cryptic about everything, otherwise I’m going to have Marvel come after me,” Garner said. “But 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.”
The Fantastic Four: First Steps opens in theaters on July 25th. Are you excited to see Silver Surfer in the movie? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
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