Gwyneth Paltrow confirmed in an interview the other day that she will indeed be suiting up Iron Man 3, a bit of news that we couldn’t be more excited about. Marvel has published the entire interview now, and so we can get even more info on how and when the decision to get Pepper in an Iron Man suit was made, and what it was like!
Okay, I know wanting to know what it’s like to be in an Iron Man suit is has a bit less entertainment journalist integrity to it compared to “how was the decision made to allow a female co-star to engage in some of the movie’s action in a dominant role made.” But… Iron Man suit!
Said Paltrow to Marvel.com:
There were talks of Pepper getting in the suit at the end of Iron Man 2, but Marvel wasn’t ready to do it yet. I think in the comic books she does eventually get into the suit and she has her own suit, and I know Robert [Downey, Jr.] was really interested in having Pepper do more in this movie, and it was also a factor in me coming back and getting to do things that were a little bit more fun and different and a little bit more adventurous. It would’ve still been nice, but it would’ve been very much the same thing just to be buttoned-up Pepper, and in this movie there’s a whole different experience of her.
For those who might be unaware, Paltrow isn’t wrong. Pepper Potts did suit up as a superhero for a period in comics, going by the code name Rescue and looking nothing so much like Iron Man with boobs. It’s also great to hear that the actors behind these adaptations love the characters in them so much that they’ll advocate for them. I especially like that Pepper getting a more active role was a “factor” in Paltrow coming back to do the movie. It’s unfortunate that such advocating didn’t work out for Natalie Portman and Thor 2.
There was one more quote that caught my attention, though it might be a little spoilery, so highlight at your own risk.
I think in this movie he’s really trying to reconcile what’s what and who he wants to be and the direction that he wants to go in. Robert plays that kind of thing so beautifully. He’s an actor that can play so many notes at once, and it’s wonderful to see. The scene where he sends a fake Iron Man to Pepper and pretends it’s him could be that classic man thing of, “I just don’t want to deal with my girlfriend,” but I think it’s really Tony not wanting to be intimate. It’s a barrier between Pepper and Tony that he doesn’t necessarily want to cross. I think it’s painful for him to fully commit to her with his whole heart, because there’s a lot in there and he’s still reckoning with how to deal with it.
I’d be interested to see how that scene plays out in the film, and whether its dominant tone is of Tony dealing badly with his emotional damage or if it could merely be interpreted that way. You can read the rest of the interview right here, and Iron Man 3 comes out… not soon enough, basically.
