Marvel – Academy Award-nominated actress Scarlett Johansson first made her Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in 2010 with Marvel Studios’ Iron Man 2, and over ten years later, in 2021, audiences will discover her character Natasha Romanoff’s story outside of the Avengers with the release of Black Widow, in theaters and on Disney+ with Premier Access on July 9.

Not much is known about Natasha Romanoff, but as an elite super spy, she prefers it that way. What we do now know is that she’s done running from her past, and that the Avengers weren’t her first family.

In Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff confronts the darker parts of her ledger when a dangerous conspiracy with ties to her past arises. Pursued by a force that will stop at nothing to bring her down, Natasha must deal with her history as a spy and the broken relationships left in her wake long before she became an Avenger.

FROM EVERYTHING TO NOTHING
Black Widow immediately picks up after the events of Marvel Studios’ Captain America: Civil War. During an intimate press discussion on the set of Black Widow, Johansson reminisced that as an operative, Natasha has always been part of this “greater whole,” whether it was part of the Red Room, or S.H.I.E.L.D., or the Avengers. She’s been part of some unit or makeshift family, but now “after Civil War, it’s all gone. Everything is gone. And for the first time ever, really just on her own.”

This predicament presented challenges that intrigued Johansson. “She doesn’t have to return to anything,” remarked Johansson, “which is a pretty terrifying place to be when you’ve been attached to something for so long.”

A TEAM OF ONE
“When you find her at the beginning of the film, she’s just broken,” shared Johansson, “and by the end of the film, the goal is to put her back together, but different from before.”

While the elite super spy known as Black Widow, now on the run as a fugitive, has always been self-sufficient, with connections everywhere, she’s finally presented an opportunity to just walk it all back, but can she?

It was important to Johansson that the solo Black Widow film was not an origin film. In her discussions with producer Kevin Feige and executive producer Brad Winderbaum, they felt this timeline was the best point in Natasha’s story to tell.

In their discussions, they realized what they wanted to explore was the relationship between Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff and Florence Pugh’s Yelena. Johansson had no interest in the story of “two women competing against one another, trying to take each other down, dethroning one another.” In Black Widow, we witness the love shared in the space of sisterhood.

collider – From the set of ‘Black Widow’ back in 2019, Johansson talks about her character’s long journey.

In 2019, Disney brought Collider and a few other journalists to London to visit the set of their highly anticipated new MCU movie Black Widow, which was in production at the time. Little did we know that the film’s planned 2020 release date would be pushed back over a year, making the wait for the Black Widow movie even longer.

Black Widow is now due to cinemas on July 9, 2021 (as well as being simultaneously released on Disney+ via Premier Access), which means we can finally share what we learned while on the Black Widow set. We were fortunate enough to speak with several people who worked on the film, including Black Widow herself Scarlett Johansson, who has portrayed Natasha Romanov (the titular Black Widow), since 2010.

We spoke with Johansson about legacy of Natasha in the MCU and how the character has evolved since her debut in Iron Man 2, and how her characterization in that film was hypersexualized. We also discussed her relationship with her sister-not-sister Yelena Belova, played in the film by Florence Pugh, and how the relationship between Natasha and Yelena changed before filming began.

So, Yelena seems to be a key part of Natasha’s redemption arc. Could you talk a little bit about that potential?
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: Yeah. We knew we wanted to include the Yelena character really early on, but that character really transformed over the months of prep that we did and development. The character kind of felt very — I don’t know how to say this. I guess what I would say is that the story of two women competing against one another and trying to take each other down and sort of dethrone one another felt uninteresting. It just didn’t feel like what I wanted to explore and I think what, really, audiences wanted to see. It just felt very old fashioned and not true, and so taking that feeling and running with that instinct, the relationship developed into what it is, which is it’s a relationship that I think is grounded in a shared experience and a knowingness and a sisterhood. With that comes many complicated feelings, of course. Not all good, fuzzy ones, but real grounded ones. It’s a very special relationship. I think it will be very touching for a lot of people. I have a lot of empathy for that relationship and for both of those characters’ history and trauma, and that shared history, as dark as it is, brings them together and there’s a lot of love between them. But, their relationship is also contentious and everything else that comes with that kind of sisterly relationship.
I think Natasha has a lot of compassion and that’s not necessarily what I would have anticipated when we were filming Iron Man 2 or Avengers or whatever. You’ve seen glimpses of it and it’s developed over time, as we’ve been able to bring the character to the forefront in different instillaments, but she’s a very compassionate person and that passion is actually what drives a lot of her decision making. I mean, she’s also practical and pragmatic and I don’t think those two things have to necessarily work against each other. That part of her is what really touches me.