Kat Dennings provides a welcome dose of comic disbelief to the film “Thor,” providing the audience her character Darcy’s perspective of Thor as he elevates from mere superhero to godlike proportions.
Dennings says it was a new experience for her to audition, and then get, a part she knew next to nothing about. “It’s not typical but it sort of is for a movie like this that’s very top-secret and anticipated, because they don’t want anything to leak or get out. So I didn’t really know what I was walking into because there was no Darcy in the comics. So after I got it, I was like, “oh! That’s what it is. Okay.”
The film was so top secret, Dennings was told very little in preparation for her audition. “They said you’re the assistant to a scientist, basically. They gave me a rough outline, and then like a two-page scene, maybe, that’s not in the movie, that’s just a scene written for the audition.”
The actress takes pride in the comic relief her character brings to the film. “Having seen the film and looking back, I probably should have felt more pressure, because I didn’t realize that it was such an important component. But at the time, it just felt easy and natural because they filmed the Asgard scenes before Santa Fe, before the Earth scenes, so Nat [Portman] and Stellan [Skarsgard] and I were basically our own little movie with Chris [Hemsworth], so we weren’t really aware of the other world. So it just felt very easy and natural. But yeah, when I saw it all put together, I was like, oh wow – holy s—! Maybe I should have been more nervous.”
Dennings says her character was a minor role in the original script, and she was fine with that, but soon Darcy took on a life of her own. “There just wasn’t that much of her, which I anticipated. I mean, when I auditioned, I went, oh, she’s an assistant, maybe she’ll be in one or two scenes – and that’s enough. I was totally excited about that; just being in Thor and working with Kenneth Branagh and everyone, I didn’t care how many scenes I was in. And then we had the table read, and for some reason Darcy was really well-received, and I think because everyone responded so well, they were like, there’s got to be more Darcy, and all of a sudden I’m in a lot of scenes. I’m like, “are you sure Darcy’s in this scene? Wow!” So I think Darcy just got bigger and bigger, and then she was very well fleshed-out, and the improvising we did in rehearsal is what ended up in the film. But it was definitely based on reality once we got to the shooting script.”
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