Elizabeth Olsen Watched Every Sitcom That Was Referenced in ‘WandaVision’
Elizabeth Olsen’s hit show WandaVision experimented with Marvel’s formula a bit to offer a new take on the superhero sub-genre. Olsen also had a good time preparing for the limited series, as it required watching quite a few television classics.
Elizabeth Olsen once shared how she felt doing ‘WandaVision’
WandaVision came as a huge and unexpected surprise for Olsen. Marvel producer Kevin Feige brought the program to Olsen’s attention, who was both thrilled and a bit nervous to star in it.
“It was so terrifying because I got very comfortable taking up my little space, my little lane, in these ensemble films. The pressure of leading one only hit me when we were doing press for it, not when we were making it. It definitely feels different than how I started out,” Olsen said in a 2022 interview with Empire.
Preparing WandaVision would also offer Olsen a more unique experience than her other Marvel projects. WandaVision was known for mimicking and paying homage to several classic television shows. To capture the tone of these comedies, Olsen would study sitcoms herself from different eras.
“We had a boot camp where the whole cast watched every single show that we made a direct reference to. That way, we could authentically recreate that style and tone, how to walk, talk, and dress, whether it was Bewitched or Malcolm in the Middle. So there was a lot of dorky actor preparation we got to do,” she once told Ok!.
Elizabeth Olsen revealed the ‘WandaVision’ scene she kept failing at
There were a couple of sequences on WandaVision that took Olsen some time to adjust to. She ran into some trouble when the Disney + show took the shape of such classics like I Love Lucy and Bewitched. The actor wasn’t accustomed to performing in front of a live audience, and quickly had to familiarize herself with new territory.
“I really didn’t understand intuitively how to play to the camera and not the audience with the audience there,” Olsen said in an interview with the LA Times. “And so when I watched that episode, I’m like, ‘God, it’s like I’m like a child at theater camp in this. I’m really playing to the audience.’ But then I remember that they kind of did have an element of playing to the audience in The Dick Van Dyke Show…. It really just felt like it wasn’t an easy transition. It was just like, bam! And you’re just there and you’re failing in front of people.”
Fortunately, Olsen had her co-star Kathryn Hahn on set to provide some humor behind the scenes.
“We were rehearsing for the live show for the ’50s episode and she was bringing in all these groceries into my kitchen and she had like a carton of fake eggs,” Olsen said. “They’re all rubber eggs. And it dropped to the floor and she goes, ‘Oh, my jade egg!’ Just without missing a beat.”
Why there wasn’t a season 2 of ‘WandaVision’
Despite WandaVision’s success in generating a lot of discussion, the series was never meant to live past season 1.
“It’s definitely a limited series,” Olsen once confirmed on Variety’s Actors on Actors.
There were a few small references to WandaVision in Multiverse of Madness. That was largely due to Olsen’s own doing since the film’s writers only knew very little about the show.
“I said ‘Do you know what we’re doing in WandaVision? Have you seen it?’ and no, they had not seen it, because it wasn’t finished yet. So I had to try and, I don’t know, play it differently, right? I had to attack the same themes in order for it to be interesting for me, I think, and potentially for the audience. I had to come at it from a different point of view so that it wasn’t repetitive,” Olsen said in an interview with Vanity Fair.
