Rebecca Hall confirms her Iron Man 3 role was reduced
The actress backed director Shane Black, who says Marvel made him change his script because female villains don't sell toys
Remember when Iron Man 3 director Shane Black claimed Marvel had forced him to change the script to reduce the role of Rebbecca Hall’s Maya Hansen and make Aldrich Killian the bad guy because female action figures just don't sell?
Well, Hall is backing him up – and she’s quite frankly delighted someone’s finally given her the opportunity to talk about the whole affair.
“That’s 100% true,” she told The Toronto Sun. “I’ve been gagging to talk about it with someone, but I haven’t had the opportunity, weirdly.”
“I signed on to do something that was a substantial role. She wasn’t entirely the villain—there have been several phases of this—but I signed on to do something very different to what I ended up doing” the actress explained.
“Halfway through shooting they were basically like, ‘What would you think if you just got shot out of nowhere?’ I was meant to be in the movie until the end … I grappled with them for awhile and then I said, ‘Well, you have to give me a decent death scene and you have to give me one more scene with Iron Man,’ which Robert Downey Jr. supported me on.”
It’s a row that’s been waging in many a sci-fi universe over the past 12 months, with Star Wars toymakers Hasbro facing major backlash for neglecting to include Rey in The Force Awakens Monopoly.
And this isn’t the first time Marvel’s been called out either, with fans fuming about the studio’s treatment of Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow.
But has the furore helped women in the industry?
“Look, [Marvel] is paying for their mistakes right now, and I applaud them for casting Brie Larson in Captain Marvel. Hallelujah” Hall said.
“It’s about time women started being the heroes of things. They can also be the anti-heroes…”
Here’s hoping Rogue One and Wonderwoman help speed the awakening along.
