Marvel has revealed that the asterisk in Thunderbolts* exists because the team is actually *The New Avengers, and Hannah John-Kamen couldn’t be happier — especially since she loved working with her new teammates. One scene in particular bonded her with fellow New Avengers Florence Pugh, Lewis Pullman and Wyatt Russell.
“There’s a specific scene in the movie where it looks like a team-building exercise,” John-Kamen, 35, exclusively told Us Weekly. “But I remember we did a lot of days of filming on that, and we were all quite physically close to each other.”
In the new box office blockbuster, various mercenaries — Ghost/Ava Starr (John-Kamen), Yelena Belova (Pugh) and John Walker/U.S. Agent (Russell) — learn they’ve been hired to kill each other in a subterranean bunker. They meet the mysterious Bob (Pullman), and the four realize they need to work together as a team to escape. They have no choice but to shimmy up an elevator shaft together — and teamwork isn’t exactly second nature for these lone wolves. The Thunderbolts* actors, however, had a little more fun.
“We ended up playing games. We sat, we sang, we played I Spy With My Little Eye. We played, the name of the game is Snaps. I mean, that was just fun. That’s what I mean: We’re just actually, naturally bonded, us all together. And we really found fun and joy in the time when we weren’t filming.”
John-Kamen said both pre-production rehearsals and shooting on location in the desert really brought the stars together.
“It felt like we were all out and we were on a school trip,” she told Us with a laugh. “We were kind of released into the wild of Utah, like Moab. That was just amazing. It really was gorgeous.”
While filming at the Marvel soundstages in Atlanta, she noted that Marvel stars stay in various parts of the city — so off-hours bonding isn’t a guarantee. “Whereas in Utah, we all stayed in the same place, so we’re all doing dinners and we’re all having fun and spending a lot of time together by the pool and all that,” she explained. “Yeah, that was my favorite time.”
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John-Kamen also told Us that much like Yelena leads the team, Florence captained the cast.
“Honestly, she’s absolutely amazing,” John-Kamen said of Pugh. “She really led [the] ship of this movie. She’s incredible and she’s so open.”
Anyone who has seen John-Kamen and Pugh hype each other up on the red carpet can see that the friendship is real.
“She’s so funny, and she just brought this joy all the time on set, as [a] fellow actor, as a friend. She’s incredible,” John-Kamen gushed. “We really did bond. Because look, we’re all playing these very, very traumatized, really dark, deep characters, and the organic love that you see really is organically us as well. We really brought that into the movie.”
As for her character, let’s just say that bonding isn’t as easy for Ava.
“She doesn’t think she deserves friendship or she doesn’t deserve people caring about her, or I think she feels like she doesn’t deserve that idea of love and a family ’cause she hasn’t ever experienced that,” John-Kamen explained. “Letting her guard down and having that idea of going, ‘Hang on, actually having someone who can rely on me and maybe I can rely on someone else, maybe that is actually pretty cool. Maybe that is actually something that I don’t have to do alone ’cause actually, sometimes, you don’t have to do everything on your own.’”
She added, “It’s a beautiful experience and a journey I think that she is gonna go on with letting her guard down and being forced to let her guard down as well.”
Marvel audiences will see Ava be challenged with more teamwork. After Thunderbolts*, which is the No. 1 movie at the worldwide box office, she’s set to appear in Avengers: Doomsday next year. The post-credits scene gave fans just a hint of what’s to come, and John-Kamen told Us with a huge grin that she had a “big reaction” to that final clip — and it’s safe to say fans will have the same.
Thunderbolts* (a.k.a. *The New Avengers) is in theaters now.
