Lia McHugh has had a long career given her age, and she broke into the superhero world with Marvel and Chloé Zhao’s Eternals as Sprite, a being who is the same age as her counterparts yet looks like a child by Earth’s standards—a thing that weighs heavily on her, as she is not taken seriously by the humans or her own Eternals family.
While Sprite can be a complicated character to talk about, I, like McHugh, understand her pain. Looking younger than you are can be both a blessing and a curse because people refuse to take you seriously despite proving yourself. It is what drives Sprite’s actions and what hurts her the most about her family, and it is displayed in an intricate and compelling way through McHugh’s performance.
In honor of the release of Eternals on Disney+, as well as the 4K, Blu-Ray, and DVD release, I got to speak with McHugh about Sprite, memes, how cute Richard Madden is, and why we love Druig/Makkari.
McHugh talks Sprite and the Eternals
“Chloé (Zhao) did a good job of casting us sort of similar to our characters,” McHugh said. “And I actually in a weird way relate to Sprite. I’ve been working with adults a lot of my life and I’ve been acting since I was 7 and I have a higher maturity level than kids my age and more of an understanding in a way. And I’ve always looked really young for my age and I’ve always struggled with that, it’s always been an internal conflict for me. And it’s something that’s been really hard to deal with.”
But there are some advantages to having a younger star in a bigger Marvel movie, mainly that McHugh has her finger on the pulse of all the memes from Eternals. When I brought up the meme of Druig knocking Sprite out, she exclaimed that she “knew” it’d become a meme as soon as it happened and also shared that she saw what was happening with co-star Kumail Nanjiani’s picture online and sent it to the Kingo actor.
“Some of our conversations were kind of funny about like what’s happening right now and we’re like freaking out,” McHugh said when I brought up how both her and Nanjiani were the two who hadn’t been in a large fandom property prior to Eternals. “We text each other sometimes and we’re like, holy heck. And I’ll send him memes I find of him. And I remember when his Men’s Health cover came out or no, someone put a picture of him on a very inappropriate website. And it like went viral. I remember that. And I like sent him a picture and I was like, KUMAIL. And he was like, Lia, that’s inappropriate. You shouldn’t be looking at that.”
At least we know that she is also a Druig/Makkari fan.
You can see our full interview here!
Catch Lia McHugh as Sprite in Eternals. Eternals is now available on Digital and will be available on 4K, Blu-ray and DVD February 15.
(image: Marvel Entertainment)
Want more stories like this? Become a subscriber and support the site!
—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—
This article includes affiliate links, which may provide small compensation to The Mary Sue.
