Evangeline Lilly Admits She Turned Down a Role in X-MEN Because She "Wasn't Into Superhero Movies"

Actress Evangeline Lilly’s career really took off when she landed the role of Kate on the hit series Lost. She became a household name, and Hollywood took notice, imagining her in all types of roles. One role was offered to her in a roundabout way when she was starring alongside Hugh Jackman in the 2011 film Real Steel.

Lilly explained on the Happy Sad Confused podcast (via Deadline):

“[Jackman] was like, 'Hey, so, the X-Men guys are asking me if I would approach you because they know that you won't talk to anybody. They knew I was working with you and were interested to know if it would ever interest you to do an X-Men thing. I was like, 'No. It doesn't interest me. I'm not interested.’ I was like, 'I feel like such a dick because I'm talking to an X-Men! The X-Men! And I'm telling him, 'No, that doesn't appeal.' Like, what?! I felt so rude!"

Lilly also revealed that she turned down an offer from Joss Whedon to play Wonder Woman for an unproduced DC movie in the '00s. Her reasoning?

"Honestly, I wasn't into superhero movies and that's the main reason why, in both of these instances, I just kind of felt like I don't know what I get out of this. I often was very critical of them. Like, I was known to mock them and treat them as lower forms of entertainment until Marvel came around."

By the point in which they were filming Real Steel, only Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, and Iron Man 2 had come out. While Iron Man was fantastic, it wasn’t yet understood how big and sprawling and incredible the MCU was going to be. Her perspective was changed, and she went on to play Hope van Dyne, AKA The Wasp, in 2015's Ant-Man, its 2018 follow-up, Ant-Man and the Wasp, as well as making an appearance in Avengers: Endgame. She reprises the role in the newly released threequel, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. 

I’m sure she’s happy with holding out, as she never would have been the Wasp if she had taken on another franchise. It all seemed to turn out for the best.