Last July, MTV News sat down with former Marvel honcho Avi Arad and asked him straight out about a rumored “Iron Man” cameo from two-time Oscar winning actress Hillary Swank, a small role which director Jon Favreau seemed to confirm in an early production blog only weeks before.
“How do you know [about that]?” a stunned Arad replied at the time, admitting that Swank did appear and that it was a “cameo.”
Immediately, fans began to speculate on her character. Was she a pre-transformation She-Hulk? The Black Widow? S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Sharon Carter?
Fooled you, Arad laughed yesterday during the green carpet for “The Incredible Hulk,” giddily admitting to purposeful subterfuge to throw the media off the scent of the “real” cameos in the film.
“She’s not there. She was never supposed to be. It got into the Internet and, you know, especially with MTV. These rumors are starting,” Arad said, laughing mightily. “There were cameos that WERE real, and we were trying to move [the media] away from the real.”
Of course, in the same interview Arad gleefully admitted that Sam Jackson would appear as Nick Fury, so, you know one out of two ain’t bad.
Interestingly, while Swank never appears in “Iron Man,” there is an actress who looks remarkably similar to her in the casino scene at Caesar’s Palace. That’s actress Stacy Stas. Maybe her resemblance was so strong that it became an in-joke with the cast and crew, and that’s what Favreau was referring to when he seemingly let slip that Swank would be in the film.
Either way, it brings up two interesting dilemmas in this day and age of the internet: would you rather know all the spoilers ahead of time, like that Nick Fury is in “Iron Man,” or go into a movie cold. And what do Hillary Swank and Stacy Stas think of all this. If either of you are out there, let me know.