Elizabeth Olsen is ready to play roles other than Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff.
In an interview with London’s The Times conducted prior to the start of the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) strike, Olsen commented on her time playing Scarlet Witch for Marvel Studios.
“I’m trying to figure out,” Olsen said. “Because, specifically in the last four years, my output has been Marvel. I don’t want…it’s not that I don’t want to be associated as just this character. But I really feel like I need to be building other parts back up for balance. I so much want to do films right now. And I hope some of them come together in the way I feel like they can. But yeah, that’s something that I need. I just need more, other characters in my life. There’s no longevity in one character.”
Elizabeth Olsen’s Marvel history, explained
Olsen first appeared as Wanda in a post-credit scene featured in 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier. She reprised the role in 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War, and 2019’s Avengers: Endgame.
In 2021, Wanda and Vision got their own Disney+ series, WandaVision. She again returned to the role in 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which depicted her in a more villainous light.
Olsen pointed to 2016, a time when she was balancing her Marvel work with a number of smaller-budget films, as a “sweet spot” in her career.
“And then obviously Covid happened and I had Marvel obligations,” she explained. “Wind River and Ingrid Goes West were films that I was very proud to have selected and they were so different and you can’t compare them. So I just want more of that in my life just because I get satisfaction from the variation.”
Most recently, Olsen starred in a 2023 Max limited series called Love & Death. She also stars in a new film from Azazel Jacobs, His Three Daughters, which will debut at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2023.
