With the premiere of Black Widow on July 9, star Scarlett Johansson has been examining her decade of playing the super spy in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The character of Natasha Romanoff has undergone quite an evolution over the course of the franchise and Johansson opened up in a new interview with Fatherly (via Uproxx). Specifically, she addressed Black Widow‘s costumes.
“After Iron Man 2 going into Avengers, there’s been an evolution of her look,” Johansson explained. “I think part of that is just gaining the trust of the executives at Marvel and kind of sitting in the character and just being able to make decisions for her. That really happened fairly early on. I mean, in Iron Man 2, I worked with the amazing incredible costume designer Mary Zophres, who created an absolutely beautiful femme fatale look for the character. And it was very stunning.”
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Johansson explained that she saw her Iron Man 2 outfits as “a costume [Natasha] was wearing — at the time, Marvel was interested in the character being a shape-shifter.” However, the Her actress also had to shut down some sillier ideas from male writers who didn’t understand what made the character tick. “When we were doing Captain America: The Winter Soldier — this is a really funny thing — the look is fantastic and utilitarian,” Johansson said. “She first drives up in this beautiful car and picks up Cap, and initially in the script, it was like, she arrives in her tennis whites, with a blonde wig. It was very quickly killed. You work with a lot of male writers. Things were shifting. You have to be a part of the change. Audiences are also demanding stuff and there’s a cultural shift and it feeds everything into a more progressive direction.”
In the same interview with Fatherly, Johansson confirmed that the solo film would be her last outing as Romanoff. “I have no plans to return as Natasha,” Johansson said. “I feel really satisfied with this film. It feels like a great way to go out for this chapter of my Marvel identity. I would love to be able to continue to collaborate with Marvel in other ways because I think there’s just an incredible wealth of stories there. Re-imagining this genre is something that I find very interesting. I think there’s a lot of opportunities to tell these stories in different ways than audiences have come to expect.”
