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With the level of secrecy in the MCU, Deadpool 3 writer-director Shawn Levy knows that there is a lot of speculation about the casting for him upcoming Marvel movie.
That gossip gained momentum recently when Levy was spotted spending time with him several times Taylor Swift. It’s not terribly surprising, since Swift is good friends with Levy’s friend and frequent collaborator, Ryan Reynolds, as well as Reynolds’ wife, Blake Lively. However, it did add some fuel to one long dormant theory that Swift could join the MCU as Dazzler.
Both Swifties and Marvel fans have been buzzing about the possibility for a while now, and it would make some sense. Dazzler, which appeared briefly in 2019 Dark Phoenix, played by Halston Sage, is a mutant most associated with the X-Men in the comic canon. The glamorous character can control and manipulate sonic vibrations and emit beams of light, and, as a side gig, is often depicted as a singer or pop star.
Levy doesn’t talk to anyone Deadpool 3 rumors, though – not the ones about Swift, or Jennifer Garner, or Channing Tatum, or Halle Berry…
“That was just a Sunday night with some friends, which turned into many more,” he told ET’s Ash Crossan of his Swift sighting. ‘I’m just saying that the proliferation of Deadpool 3 casting rumors is hilarious and also very useful because now people can’t tell what’s real and what’s not. So I can just sit back and let the wave of accuracy and untruth wash over me.”
However, the director was more than happy to talk about the casting of his new Netflix limited series, All the light we can’t see. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Anthony Doerr, the World War II drama centers on Marie-Laure LeBlanc, a blind French teenager. For the role, Levy was adamant that they cast an actress who was actually blind or visually impaired, and eventually they found Aria Mia Loberti.
Loberti is legally blind due to a severe form of the genetic condition achromatopsia, but she had never acted or auditioned for anything before. In fact, she was in the middle of her doctoral studies in ancient rhetoric at Penn State University when she filmed her audition tape.
“Aria really was like finding a unicorn in the forest,” Levy recalls. “I saw more than a thousand women and girls for the role of Marie, but what stood out during Aria’s audition – which she filmed on her own laptop from her dorm room where she was getting her PhD from Penn State – was her intelligence, her luminous physical quality .”
“That this face of hers has an innocence, but also a real power,” he added, “and I knew that even though she had no idea what acting was, had never acted, never auditioned, I knew that if you gave I am someone who is hungry, smart, strong and wants to be great, I can work with that. That’s a great place to start.’
Levy said there were questions from Netflix about casting an unknown in such a big production, but he said he didn’t get any major pushback from the streaming service.
“I suddenly had an epiphany in pre-production that I needed to cast someone who had the lived experience of the character,” he said. “That was a big change, but to Netflix’s credit, ‘Why are you doing it? Explain it. We want to hear it from you.’ And I said not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s the better thing to do, because it will give this show an authenticity that it wouldn’t have otherwise.
“I think it also helped that I went and got it then Mark Ruffalo And Hugh Laurieso there are a few other faces to put on the poster,” he added with a laugh.
Comparing the cast to another of his projects, Stranger thingswhich cast veteran stars like Winona Ryder and David Harbor in the adult roles while introducing a cast of mostly unknown young actors, Levy said he enjoys combining performers with different levels of experience.
“You just kind of get an energy and you don’t quite know how it’s going to turn out,” he said. “There were always moments that I couldn’t plan for, that might not have been in the script, but it keeps the process from becoming the kind of predictable shoebox of what you think a scene will be. From that it turns into surprises that it becomes gold.”
Part of the four-part series was shot in Budapest, Hungary, shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and Levy also made the decision to cast some Ukrainian refugees to play background actors in a scene where Marie and her father flee Paris . foot after the Nazi invasion.
“The topicality of this story and the applicability of its themes are disturbing, but that is what makes it important,” he said of the series. “It sheds light on these themes: how do we hold on to our better selves in dark times, and how do we hold on to humanity in the midst of the inhuman behavior of your fellow human beings? When I see that, it’s disturbing, but it’s also very relevant, and I think it’s important to shine that light on these themes.”
All the light we can’t see premieres on Netflix on November 2.
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