Interview: Dakota Johnson & The Cast Of “Madame Web” On Sleepovers, Gummy Bears, & 2000s Jams
It’s “Madame Web” time! The year’s first comic-book movie spins its web in theatres this week and we couldn’t be more excited!
Starring Dakota Johnson as the title character, the suspense thriller follows the story of Cassandra Webb, a paramedic in Manhattan who has clairvoyant abilities. Soon, she realises that she can make a difference with these abilities and is drawn to three young women who are bound for powerful destinies if they can all work together to survive the perils of the present!
So, you might be asking, who exactly is Madame Web?
Well, the character first appeared in print form on the pages of “The Amazing Spider-Man” #210 back in 1980. Created by Denny O’Neil and John Romita Jr., she’s always been part of Spider-Man’s supporting mythology but has never had her solo act. That is… until now.
The most notable version of the character is Cassandra Webb, who is a mutant. Despite being blind and paralysed, her clairvoyant and telepathic abilities make her one of the most powerful beings that Spidey himself has ever encountered.
The second iteration of Madame Web is none other than Julia Carpenter, who we’ll also see in the movie. This version inherited her powers from Cassandra during a comic run whereby Kraven’s daughter slays the original.
That’s not to say that she hasn’t appeared in other popular forms of media. In animated form, she made her mark in the 90’s “Spider-Man: The Animated Series” serving as an important figure in a multiversal war. Besides, “Ultimate Spider-Man” on Disney XD also features the character albeit the Julia Carpenter version.
Madame Web also appeared in the popular video game “Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions” where she guided Peter Parker on a quest to reassemble the Tablet of Order and Chaos.
With regards to the film adaptation, Dakota Johnson’s iteration is part of a standalone universe. That means it doesn’t have a tether to the Venom-verse, Miles’ Spider-Verse, or the MCU (as of now). The origin of the character here is a little different but the essential powers are retained. Of course, one major deviation here is that Madame Web is not wheelchair bound and this allows her to have more of an active role in the plot.
Dakota Johnson saw the irresistible qualities of Madame Web and jumped at the chance to be part of a Marvel superhero film that was different from any other. “I was very intrigued by the prospect of a female superhero’s superpower being her mind,” she says. “I was also really intrigued by the relationship that she has with three younger women – how she becomes a maternal figure to them while empowering them to discover their true natures as Spider-Women.”
Those three young ladies are part of a bigger plot but will eventually serve justice in their superhero outfits. Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney), Anya Corazon (Isabela Moner) and Mattie Franklin (Celeste O’Connor) are all fated to have lives intertwined with Cassie’s.
While having dissimilar experiences, there is a unifying theme about the four of them. Sydney’s Julia Cornwall is in a difficult position, having her paternal figure moving on to a new life with a new family where she feels she doesn’t belong. In the same way, Anya puts on a tough front to hide the truth of her own life. And then, there’s Mattie, who is this really rich girl who doesn’t have parental figures around because they’re always halfway around the world.
In terms of powers, they are pretty distinct from the conventional concept of Spider-Man. Probably the Spider-Verse has introduced a myriad of Spider-People, and they are definitely unique but they also all shoot webs in the same manner. Think Gwen Stacy or Jessica Drew.
Julia’s powers are psionic webs which are electric and they electrocute whoever she hits them with. Mattie has something akin to the Iron Spider armour’s legs that she uses expertly in combat. On the other hand, Anya can fire web-like discs, which can propel and go anywhere she wants it to go. Think, Captain America’s shield.
Now, there is another enigma in the mix in Tahar Rahim’s Ezekiel Sims who finds out that he will be killed by the trio in the future. As such, he is on a mission to kill them before they can ever do the deed.
Tahar explains, “He is in a fight for survival. Here’s a guy who grew up poor and watched his entire family starve. This trauma ultimately turns him into a survivor. He will do whatever it takes to stay alive – it’s an instinct that grows into an obsession. He now depends on these powers to keep him alive.”
To prepare for their roles, the actors were committed to extensive stunt training for two months for each of their characters. “Before we even got to Boston to film, they tested our skills: grappling, running, fighting, endurance… our strengths and our weaknesses”, said Sydney. “From there, we could work on it and build our strengths into what we wanted to show for our character.”
Director S.J. Clarkson has been tried and tested throughout the years as a TV talent. She earned a reputation for implementing strong females, having helmed “Anatomy of a Scandal,” “Collateral,” and “Love, Nina,”. With superhero experience under her belt in Marvel’s “Jessica Jones” and “The Defenders.”, she brings her unique vision over to her first feature “Madame Web”.
With Clarkson on board, there was always a central focus on feminity. “There’s a theme of empowerment throughout the movie that comes from the fact that each of these characters goes on their journey,” says Clarkson. “Cassie has to resolve the wounds of her past to embrace the future fully, and each of the girls comes to learn that they had strengths within them that they didn’t know.”
“I really like the idea of ordinary people being heroes, because they are,” says Johnson. “There was an opportunity with this movie to reinvent a Marvel world where, first of all, it’s led by women, and women make it – and because of that, the characters are real, and they are messy, and they are complicated, and they are extremely powerful.”
Of course, Clarkson wanted to develop Cassie with a distinctive style that she hoped could connect with audiences. “Maybe seeing into the future is like remembering something – and memory sometimes isn’t clear, it’s often fragmented. It wasn’t necessarily linear. You never saw it from A to B to C. Visions and sounds don’t always meet up together,” she explains. “So, I thought about how we might find a visual way into this, and it’s almost like a camera shutter, the blink of an eye.”
To achieve this, she developed what she called a ‘kaleidoscopic’ aura to her sequences and we’re going to get a little technical here. Together with her director of photography, Mauro Fiore, they developed a look of fragmentation by using a split diopter lens which would shift the focal plane and create a distortion in size. That lens would be placed in front of a portrait lens, and that focuses on the central point of the frame with the sides fading out.
Another challenging aspect of the vision sequences was the amount of takes they had to do. Because of the unusual method, the shooting had to be done three or four times with extreme coordination and concentration. “Each moment had to have its own diopter, its different lens, fragmented. On top of that, you’re not shooting in sequence, so you can drive yourself crazy”, says Clarkson. “There was an awful lot of moving parts to that, which made it probably one of the most challenging but also the most rewarding and exciting sequences to do.”
Now, we at Hype Malaysia were extremely thrilled to sit and interview the main stars along with the director, S.J. Clarkson as they opened up on their experiences filming the movie, sleepovers, and more. Read on below!
1. Let’s kick things off with a light one. Seeing that the film is set in 2003, there are a lot of references to that. With music, it was the time of Kelly Rowland, Queen B, and we hear some Britney in there. So, my question is, what would be your jam from that era?
CELESTE: My jam… Okay, so maybe not exactly from 2003 but “Complicated” by Avril Lavigne? Yeah, let’s go!
ISABELA: Uhmm, anything like Destiny’s Child and Beyonce. I love “Me, Myself & I”. The album poster was for “Crazy In Love”. Yeah, I think. That album. It’s a great album. That whole album is on replay.
SYDNEY: Britney. Yeah, Britney.
2. This is the first time you three are playing superhero characters based on comics. What has the experience been like for you in terms of energy, performance, and all?
SYDNEY: I’m glad we have each other. I think we brought out amazing sides of each character for the chemistry that we have. Playing superheroes with you guys is really cool.
ISABELA: I agree.
CELESTE: Couldn’t agree more.
3. How would you describe your dynamic together as Spider-Women along with working with Dakota? She’s basically ‘mother’ to your characters.
CELESTE: I feel like we’re all pretty similar to our characters in some ways. Our characters are all like parts of us. But I think in real life, that dynamic is wholesome, supportive, giddy and like “OMG, I’m so proud of you.”. The girls in the movie were beefing.
ISABELA: Yeah.
CELESTE: But that’s not really us.
ISABELA: We really shower each other with love on a daily basis. We’re so… corny.
SYDNEY: We were sending each other pictures of our outfits and we were like “OH MY GOD YOU LOOK INCREDIBLE”
ISABELA: I was texting somebody and they were talking to me and I was like.. “Shut up.” And I was like looking through your pictures and was like “THIS IS SO GOOD”. It felt so rude. I was being rude.
4. Which sequence was probably the most challenging to shoot?
SYDNEY: Oooh, the most challenging sequence?
CELESTE: The rooftop I think for me.
SYDNEY: The rooftop had a lot of elements. That lasted multiple nights.
CELESTE: We were there for weeks! Because I remember we had to be nocturnal. That was a lot. We were doing night shoots for a good amount of time to get that final fight scene and that was so much fun because we were having a sleepover every single day.
ISABELA: You’ve got a shift in your circadian rhythm. It’s hard.
CELESTE: It was challenging. But we fed you a lot of gummy bears to keep Sydney awake. Because Sydney doesn’t do caffeine.
ISABELA: She only does gummy bears and doughnuts.
SYDNEY: I was off the caffeine, for sure. Yeah, gummy bears and candy.
5. Tahar, you play the main villain, Ezekiel, in the movie. How familiar were you with the character from the comics?
TAHAR: I wasn’t familiar at all. When I read the script, I discovered the whole story about Madame Web, all of them, and of course, Ezekiel. So, I read everything I could about Ezekiel and comic books and I found him very fascinating and versatile. So, interesting enough to portray.
6. You have portrayed characters before that are scary and cunning, but also have a certain calmness to that storm inside. Would you say that is a strength of yours in your portrayals and that has helped you play characters like Ezekiel?
TAHAR: I don’t know if it’s part of me. Maybe? We always bring something from ourselves and our characters. Whether it is conscient or not. So, in this case, I thought that it would be more scary if you kept it in and became very dense. It was a question of density more than letting it all out. It’s less scary when you see somebody screaming out, making faces and all.
7. Talk to us about doing action in a suit. Was it a practical one that you had to wear?
TAHAR: Yeah, the super suit was comfortable enough to wear so I could move in the same way as Ezekiel would move to do my stunts as much as I could with the fighting choreography. Yeah, it was comfortable and flexible.
8. Some of the previous Spider-Men had issues going to the bathroom. Did you have that sort of challenge as well?
TAHAR: Nooo [chuckles]. But I think they learned lessons from the past cause they found that this could happen!
9. How would you describe your experience working with Dakota and the other Spider-Women?
TAHAR: It was a memorable experience I had. I had fun with them. I mean, they are great actresses and very professional. Very nice. So, it was great working with them.
The only thing is that I feel a little frustrated about not having enough scenes with them on screen.
10. S.J. Congratulations on your first feature! Of course, this is not your first rodeo with powered individuals. You’ve helmed stuff on TV like Jessica Jones/The Defenders. Overall, how has your experience on TV carried over to Madame Web?
S.J.: Without a doubt, I couldn’t have made this film had I not had all the experience I’ve had, not only with “Jessica Jones” but on many of the other shows I’ve done. I think every episode or series I’ve directed played a part in getting me to where I am today. You learn on everything and I’ve tackled everything as if it is a movie. I never thought TV was any different. Your filmmaking and storytelling, that’s at the core of everything I do.
11. Would you say that there was little or no challenge in making a feature since your approach to TV itself was the same?
S.J.: Oh no, there’s a challenge, trust me. The making of a movie of this scale is challenging. I guess you don’t shoot the whole movie in one day. It’s like, each day is another scene and each scene is just one shot at a time.
It sounds quite basic to say that but I think it’s helpful when you’re facing something like this. You can only shoot one shot at the same time. Or have two sets, you know. Whatever, you’re doing.
So, you’re in the moment for each moment of the movie. You try not to think of it as a whole. Don’t look at the schedule too much. Don’t look at what’s down the road. Just keep thinking, “Where am I at?”
I guess I got under the skin of the script. So, I understood the script. I knew the story we were trying to tell, which helped because it’s inside you anyway.
12. One of the scenes we thought was a standout was the train sequence. It had this sort of suspenseful paranoia, dialling the volumes back and forth between safety and danger. What can you tell us about the process of getting these sequences right?
S.J.: Oh wow, thank you! That’s actually one of my favourite scenes because it was one of the hardest to do. Therefore, when you’ve got it right, it’s one of the most fulfilling when you’ve managed to pull that off.
It’s really about getting inside Cassie’s head. At that moment I wanted the audience to experience clairvoyance with her. We’ve sort of watched her experience in some of the other scenes. We’ve never quite been with her. As with each clairvoyance moment throughout the movie, I wanted to make sure that it was a little different. And that we were either with Cassie, observing Cassie, or we were surprised by Cassie. This was one of those moments where I wanted to be in the hot seat with her.
The challenge of course is you’re making a scene. You’re directing a scene in an enclosed space where everyone is sat down. There’s no action. There’s no movement. So, it’s camera and editing. It’s about how we can get in and out of the clairvoyance, the variant versions of the future, and knowing how we were going to splice those together after shooting. The biggest challenge I think was trying to keep all that in my head at the same time. It was a lot. I think we shot it over a week. So, it was an awful lot. I definitely slept that Sunday after that week.
13. What was it like crafting the dynamic between Madame Web and the other Spider-Women whereby they’re all entangled in this web of similar experiences?
S.J.: Yeah, that was the fun thing about it. Ultimately, they were each going on their own individual journey but they share a common theme. It was about driving towards the end goal of the connections. What made it quite exciting was balancing that and making sure that each character felt individual and they had their own story to tell. They had their own backstory. Each of the spiders themselves was unique, original, and vital. I was so lucky that the cast was so exceptional, headed by Dakota, but with the three spiders in it, they are inimitable.
14. Dakota, your character has clairvoyant abilities and she can look into the near future. If you had that sort of ability in real life, what are some things you would like to know?
DAKOTA: I don’t think I would want that ability at all. I think I like being surprised by the future.
15. Now, we’ve loved your work and performances in recent years, especially “Cha Cha Real Smooth”. With “Madame Web”, I believe it’s a very distinct addition to your filmography, in which you play a comic book character. So, what can you tell us about this new chapter in your journey?
DAKOTA: I’m really excited to be a part of this world. I love Madame Web. I think that she’s a young woman with a powerful mind. And it’s just a new experience for me. It’s exciting and I’m grateful.
16. Of course, “Madame Web” is part of Sony’s Spider-Man sandbox. If there is a chance of a crossover, is there any Spider-Person from the other films who you would like your character to interact with?
DAKOTA: “Madame Web” is actually not a part of the Spider-Man universe. It’s a new world, and it’s her own world and her own perspective on a superhero world. So, I don’t know if there would be any crossover. Who knows?
17. Yeah, but say theoretically, there was a multiverse in place, would you wanna interact with anyone?
DAKOTA: Yeah, I don’t know. [grins]
18. If there’s one thing that you hope audiences take away from this film, what would that be?
DAKOTA: I hope that they have a joyful experience and they feel inspired by these four powerful young women.
“Madame Web” releases in theatres nationwide this Valentine’s.
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