THUNDERBOLTS* Director Jake Schreier Talks About Olga Kurylenko's Reaction to Her Character's Fate in the Film

We’ve written a couple of times about the surprising death of the character Antonia Dreykov, aka Taskmaster, played by actress Olga Kurylenko in Marvel’s Thunderbolts* a couple of weeks ago.

It was one of those choices in a movie that you don’t see coming, seeing as how that character was one of the core members of the team, but director Jake Schreier previously said to The New York Times that the decision was made when they realized how little bloodshed had happened in the first drafts of the film’s script.

Schreier explained:

"That was a tough one because it’s a character that matters to a lot of people and we don’t want to take that lightly. That idea came after the strike when it just felt like the movie at that point was a little bloodless.

“It’s not rated R, but if we were trying to tell a story that had real tension about people who killed people for a living, you needed to depict that in a way.

“Obviously, we could have introduced a new character and then gotten rid of them, but then it wouldn’t have the resonance or potentially the shock of doing it to Taskmaster."  

When asked asked how Olga Kurylenko reacted to the news of her character’s early death, Schreier responded:

"It’s not easy. It’s like in sports: Players want to play. Olga’s a great actress and of course that’s a hard conversation to have, but she was an absolute pro about it and willing to show up, and I’m very grateful for that."

It was sad to see her character go. I loved her in Black Widow, and was interested in seeing her again, so it was too bad her screentime was cut short. But it did serve the story, and who knows, maybe we will see her again before the multiverse is closed for good.