Movieline spoke with Dennings about her involvement in Thor, managing expectations for future Thor sequels and her close friendship with co-star Portman.
You’ve been modest about your work in Thor, playing it down in the media, when in fact you provide the film’s very important comic relief.
Oh! Well, I don’t know. I’m just really grateful, honestly, to be in a movie like this, with the people that are working on it. I’m just really surprised that I didn’t get cut out. [Laughs] But, yeah, just really excited about it. It’s not like Darcy was in the comic books so I can’t really say if she’s coming back. I don’t know, if she’s needed, then absolutely I will. But yeah, the other characters are built in, have a fan base, and have a history, so I don’t want to put my foot in my mouth and say something that doesn’t pay off.
What kind of purpose do you see Darcy fulfilling in the film, especially in contrast to Natalie Portman’s Jane?
Jane is a scientist and deeply passionate about that, and Darcy isn’t really that passionate about anything, but she just loves Jane and wants to help. So she’s sort of an eager little puppy but also really bored and really lazy.
She’s also the closest character the film has to an audience stand in, commenting on the silliness of Thor’s Asgardian traits on Earth to beat the audience to the punch.
Yes, that’s exactly how I look at it! She’s the one who says what the audience is thinking, and that’s really fun to play with. And if you say it, then it’s out and [the audience] can stop thinking it. So having someone in the film say it takes any air out of the impulse for other people to say it.
That goes for Thor’s cocky, godly swagger — he’s used to being feared and respected and making demands — and, of course, for those abs, which you get to ogle, which is what we’ve all been doing from the other side of the screen.
Yeah. It’s pretty amazing! But don’t kid yourself; that is hard. The discipline, and also to work out for the hours that [Chris Hemsworth] worked out while also being Thor in the movie Thor. So he’d be shooting all day and then he’d go to the gym for hours at night.
(On N. Portman) This year in particular we’ve gotten to see the lighter side of her, and that continues in Thor.
Absolutely. She’s hilarious! She’s so wickedly funny, and people haven’t gotten to see that side of her until now.
So you two have known each other for a while, and you’re out on location together in New Mexico. What do you do in your down time?
Oh my God, there was so much goofing off. There was a lot of, I’d be sleeping, the phone would ring and it would be Chris like, ‘Meet me downstairs in five,’ and I’d be like, ‘Oh, God!’ I’d get up and we’d go to breakfast. There were a lot of tired breakfasts. That was the story of our lives. We had the best time.
You mentioned that since you shared most of your scenes with both Natalie and Stellan [Skarsgård], he was subjected to a lot of girl talk?
Oh yeah, poor guy. Poor guy. I’m so bummed he’s not here, I miss him. But he lives in Sweden so that’s probably why. It’s a little far to drive. But Natalie and I just never stop talking. Never stop talking. And Stellan was in all of those scenes with us — we’d be talking about boys or something and we’d turn around, and Stellan is just napping in the back seat. Poor guy, with two ridiculous young girls talking about silly things. [Laughs]
You didn’t read the script for Thor before being cast, so how did that process work?
They didn’t let us read a script, it was top secret. But I knew, obviously, that it was Thor, that it was Kenneth Branagh, that Natalie was in it — and that was pretty much all I knew. And that was enough. I mean, say Kenneth Branagh and I’m done. So I auditioned like everybody else.
What did you know of your character going in?
They gave me a brief character description and like two pages of a sort of fake scene, because they didn’t even use the names Darcy or Jane. They used different names so that no one could say what the movie’s about. You just had no idea.
Thor hits cinemas May 6th !