After heading a solo Marvel series as Kamala Khan, it’s no exaggeration to say that 20-year-old Iman Vellani has since been thrown into the deep end. Following the explosive Ms Marvel ending and post-credit scene, Vellani has joined forces with Brie Larson and Teyonah Paris for superhero movie The Marvels.
Filming a TV series is one thing, but when it came to shooting a Marvel movie, Vellani admitted in an interview with Associated Press that she still had a lot to learn. The good news is, she had a number of role models on set who could impart their wisdom from the industry onto her — and one piece of advice that was especially poignant came from Samuel L Jackson, who is set to reprise his role as MCU character Nick Fury in the Marvel movie.
“I remember when Sam Jackson was on set, I had this whole laundry list of questions for him,” Vellani recalled. “And I was asking him like, ‘What’s the best characteristic of an actor?’ Or something like that. And he was like, ‘Patience.’ I was like, ‘Yes, Sam, you right. Patience.’”
According to Vellani, that one-word piece of advice had a huge impact on her moving forward. “[A]fter that, I never complained, ever,” she explained. “If anything took longer than five minutes, or ten minutes, or coming to set and not even working, it’s all part of the job and you have to understand that there’s so many moving parts.”
She added that when it comes to shooting a movie, “it’s like a little world, constantly moving around you, and you have no idea where to put yourself.”
“So,” she said, “[You] just really have to work with it and appreciate the amount of people and bodies that are working on making this one, two-hour movie, or whatever.”
The Marvels will land in theatres on July 28, 2023. You’ll also be able to catch Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury in Secret Invasion, which is set to drop on Disney Plus sometime next year.