As someone who has never watched Lost but has known many, many people who love the show, I have been exposed to the hateration/holleration that has surrounded Evangeline Lilly as an actress, so seeing her unleashed and unbothered during the press tour for Ant-Man and The Wasp is delightful.
First of all, it seems so surreal that 20 MCU films have come out and Ant-Man and The Wasp is the first one to have a female superhero in the title—despite the fact that it’s shared, and Captain Marvel will be the first solo heroine in 2019. Yet, The Wasp was a founding member of the original Avengers, before Captain America even joined, and was the one who gave them the name. While the MCU has chosen to go with second generation iterations of Ant-Man and The Wasp, it doesn’t erase the fact that The Wasp deserved her due way before now—something that Lilly doesn’t mince words around, because yes, there have been other superheroines in the MCU before her, but she’s the one who got her name in the title where it belongs, and that’s a huge deal.
‘IT’S ABOUT TIME’: Star of new superhero film #AntManandTheWasp #EvangelineLilly celebrates her character being the first female to be named in a title of a #Marvel film. pic.twitter.com/47PkGbDKvr
— AP Entertainment (@APEntertainment) June 25, 2018
Secondly, Evangeline Lilly calls out the fact that she’s been hearing male superheroes complain about their super suits for years, and when she finally got to put hers on, she was like, “This is fine.” Was The Wasp’s super suit just more comfortable than any super suit not crafted by Edna Mode herself? Or, as Lilly put it, are men just not used to being uncomfortable for the sake of looking good, the way women are? Someone bring Evangeline Lilly her dragons, because she is in Khaleesi mode.
This is great and such a welcome change from the last time we saw Evangeline Lilly during a press tour for a major franchise.
(via: Warner Bros. Pictures)
I’ll never forget when I heard that she had signed on to The Hobbit—playing an original female character make the movies slightly less of an overwhelming sausage fest—on the condition that she not be put in a love triangle, only to then … be put in a love triangle and become fodder for haters. Let’s be honest, they would have been mad at her character regardless just for existing, and then the story didn’t even do right by her.
Her chill that you witness in the Ant-Man and The Wasp press tour is the chill that comes from playing a character that compels you as an actress and doesn’t reduce you to a love interest, in a love triangle for reasons we are all still trying to figure out. #JusticeforTauriel
Thankfully, that has not stopped Evangeline Lilly from being her best self. It’s no surprise she’s talking about the uncomfortable things women do to survive. In an interview with Shape Magazine, she talks about how, at 20, while working two jobs, she totaled her car and had no way to make a living without it, so she entered a bikini contest where the prize was a one-year lease on a pickup truck. So she “hit the gym ‘like a maniac,’ self-tanned her alabaster skin into a deep golden tone, subsisted on protein shakes and egg whites—and triumphed.”
When actresses and models are defined by how closely they fit into an ideal, in order to make a living, they learn to be uncomfortable real fast. Thankfully, nowadays, Lilly doesn’t put her body through that level of intensity; she trained for Ant-Man and The Wasp by doing sprint workouts and sensible eating. However, she makes it clear: “I’m wearing a corset! People don’t look like that.”
Slay on, Evangeline Lilly. Slay on. Between her and Queen Michelle playing the original Wasp, I’m so excited for this light-hearted follow-up to Infinity War.
(image: Screengrab)
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