Across the course of the Marvel movies in order, we’ve seen nearly innumerable actors bring some of our favorite comic book characters to life, and many of them will continue doing so well beyond the 2025 movies schedule. However, some stars have had complaints about leading MCU films, but Guardians of the Galaxy villain-turned-good guy Karen Gillan recently explained why she has no plans of ever being counted among that number.
What Did Karen Gillan Say About Starring In The MCU?
Even though starring in a blockbuster franchise like the Marvel Cinematic Universe can lead to long-time guaranteed (and very large) pay days for many actors, there are some drawbacks. Pedro Pascal (who led The Fantastic Four: First Steps as Reed Richards and will return in the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday) has talked about how taking on each of his franchise gigs has been “scarier” than the last, and (of course) there’s all that “cult”-like secrecy and security noted by Karen Gillan’s Guardians co-star, Zoe Saldaña.
When speaking with Photobook Magazine, though, Gillan said that for all of the potential stress that goes along with being a major player in such a big-budget franchise with long-established IP, she’d never complain about being involved in things like the MCU for one big reason. She said:
One of the things that I love so much about working in the franchise space is that you get much longer to tell the character’s story. I’ve had ten years with Nebula, which has been amazing because this character is so complex and interesting that it needed this amount of time to evolve properly and for us to explore all the layers of the trauma she has dealt with in her life.
Something that movie lovers can often forget about superhero movies is that the best of them are always able to give viewers something we can relate to, despite their often otherworldly, action-packed plots. Nebula was hardly a one-note bad guy, with a lot of her early actions being attributed to how she was forcibly trained by Thanos (and alongside adopted sister Gamora) from childhood, leading to pretty much all of that “trauma” that Gillan had time to “explore” on screen.
It’s understandable, though, that not everyone would have quite the same experience. Zachary Levi (who appeared in the middle two Thor movies before leading Shazam! and its sequel) admitted to enjoying his DC work much more than his time in Marvel, because his character in the latter “didn’t really do all that much.” Meanwhile, Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth has opened up about smaller irritants like the “exhausting” process of recording sound effects for fight scenes.
The mom of baby Clementine has already said that she’s willing to bring Nebula back at some point, should she be asked to do so, because “it's so much fun working in the Marvel world,” and it sounds like a lot of that has to do with how rewarding portraying the character has been. As Gillan added:
Every time I’ve played her, there’s been something new that I’ve managed to uncover thanks to the writing and the character’s backstory.
While we have no clue whether or not we’ll get another appearance from the Jumanji 4 actor’s Nebula in a future Marvel project, at least we can rest easy knowing that she’ll jump at the chance to dive back in, given her enjoyment of what’s come before.
