Evangeline Lilly can be seen as Hope Van Dyne aka The Wasp in MCU’s latest movie Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania starring Paul Rudd, Jonathan Majors, and Kathryn Newton. The Ant-Man franchise was not the first superhero movie that came her way. The actress has revealed that she was offered a role in Hugh Jackman’s X-Men and Joss Whedon’s Wonder Woman, the movies she declined.
In the latest episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast on Josh Horowitz’s YouTube Channel, Evangeline shared that in 2011 when Hugh Jackman had called her to offer her role in the next X-Men movie on behalf of the makers who wanted to know if she was interested in the role. But she declined the offer.
She said, “I was like, ‘I feel like such a d*** because I’m talking to an X-Men! The X-Men! And I’m telling him, ‘No that doesn’t appeal. Like, what?!’ I felt so rude! I was like, ‘No. It doesn’t interest me. I’m not interested.”
Evangeline Lily has also declined the offer by Joss Whedon to play Wonder Woman in a film. She said Whedon might have got the feeling from her impression that she had ‘no desire’ in the offer.
“It didn’t appeal and there was nothing about the meeting that jazzed me or made me think like, ‘Oh, I’ve gotta do this.’ Nothing clicked. Nothing felt good. I am way too authentic for my good. I mean, it’s not good. If I am not impressed, you’ll know. And maybe you shouldn’t know sometimes”, the actress shared.
Lily said that Whedon might have taken a ‘slight offence’ at her rejecting the project. She stated that she doesn’t mind ‘burning bridges’ and that not everyone in Hollywood was willing to work with her. The actress explained herself by stating that she was not ‘into’ superhero movies, and that’s why she rejected both offers.
Since then, Evangeline Lily has featured in Ant-Man and The Wasp and Marvel Studio’s latest Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, which came to theatres on February 17, 2023. Additionally, she also featured in Avengers: Endgame.
