Emma Corrin Based Their Deadpool & Wolverine Villain on Willy Wonka and a Fictional Nazi

Samantha Riedel
·3 min read
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Raymond Hall/Getty Images

In order to bring one of Marvel Comics’ most notorious war criminals to life, Emma Corrin drew upon the most appropriate inspiration they could find: fictional Nazis and Willy Wonka, People Magazine reported.

The nonbinary breakout star of The Crown takes a villainous turn this weekend as the truly diabolical Cassandra Nova in Marvel’s Deadpool and Wolverine, the capstone to Ryan Reynolds’ fan-favorite Deadpool film trilogy. In a red carpet interview with People at the film’s world premiere this week, Corrin revealed Reynolds’ jumping-off point for how Nova should be portrayed — Christoph Waltz’s infamous Nazi officer Hans Landa, from the Quentin Tarantino film Inglourious Basterds.

“I drew inspiration from Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds, which was Ryan's reference when we started,” Corrin explained. But as filming progressed, “I was really inspired by Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka,” they said — “Sort of a nonchalant, detached power.” As someone who always thought Wilder’s Wonka was bizarre and off-putting, I, for one, fully endorse any Wonkaisms that have found their way into Corrin’s performance.

The combination of those two characters might seem impossibly weird, but given Nova’s comic book roots, that level of tonal wackiness actually makes a lot of sense. Nova was created back in 2001 for Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s New X-Men, where she was revealed to be Charles Xavier’s evil twin, thought to have died in the womb after trying to strangle her brother with his own umbilical cord (see what we mean?). Following her first defeat, Nova sought revenge by committing a genocide against the mutant nation of Genosha, killing 16 million fellow mutants in a gambit to gain control of Xavier’s body — an event that would shape Marvel’s X-books for the next two decades, and which positions her as a thematic opposite of the X-Men’s most famous enemy Magneto, famously a Holocaust survivor. To paraphrase the vicious Landa himself, “what a tremendously hostile world a mutant must endure.”

Though we won’t know Nova’s ultimate role in Deadpool and Wolverine until opening night, the trailers have provided plenty of hints for eagle-eyed comics fans trying to piece together the mystery ahead of time. The film will apparently see Deadpool (Reynolds) abducted by the Time Variance Authority — an extradimensional organization last seen in Marvel’s Loki series — as a “series consultant” for one last adventure, taking him into the now-barren universe of 20th Century Fox’s original X-Men films of the 2000s. There, Deadpool teams up with a reluctant Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) to oppose Nova, who has taken up residence inside the gigantic, hollowed-out cadaver of Ant-Man (previously played in the MCU by Paul Rudd).

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The film will also see the return of queer actors Brianna Hildebrand as Negasonic Teenage Warhead (and Neg’s girlfriend Yukio, played by Rila Fukushima), at least in a cameo role during the film’s inciting action. Thankfully not returning is T.J. Miller, the comedian who portrayed Deadpool’s friend Weasel in the first two films, but who was drummed out of Hollywood following sexual abuse allegations and revelations he had made transphobic remarks over email to a trans film critic. As Jackman’s Wolverine himself growls in the film’s final trailer, let’s fucking go.

Deadpool and Wolverine premieres in theaters July 26.

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