Yahoo Movies Scarlett Johansson Reveals She Originally Didn't Get Black Widow Role: 'I Was Pretty Bummed'
Film Frame/Marvel Studios 2020 Scarlett Johansson in Black Widow (2021)
Scarlett Johansson didn't immediately book her now-iconic role as Black Widow.
The actress was up for the part before 2010's Iron Man 2, but missed out on the role before a twist of fate landed her just where she wanted to be.
"I was a big fan of the first Iron Man. And I wanted to work with Jon [Favreau] and Robert [Downey Jr.] and then I did not get the role and I was pretty bummed about that, happens all the time," she said in a new interview with BBC Radio 1, via Screenrant. "Then, I fatefully — several weeks later, the actor who was cast in the role originally was not able to do it because of a scheduling conflict. So, Jon called me and we met again and I said, 'Yes, I'm extremely available still.' "
The actress was none other than Emily Blunt, who has since spoken about the "heartbreak" of having to ultimately turn down the role since she was contracted to star in Gulliver's Travels the same year.
In the interview, Johansson talked about the lesson she learned from the casting ordeal.
"If anybody ever asks me about what advice I have to other actors who are trying to make it I say, 'Every opportunity is an opportunity to work, and you'll never get a better call than when you thought you lost a job then got it.' I was so excited to have a second chance at it," she said.
Getty; Marvel Emily Blunt, Scarlett Johansson
In a recent interview on The Howard Stern Show, Blunt addressed how she was initially in talks to play the Marvel heroine in Iron Man 2.
"I actually do want to clean up the story," said Blunt. "I was contracted to do Gulliver's Travels. I didn't want to do Gulliver's Travels.
"It was a bit of a heartbreaker for me because I take such pride in the decisions that I make and they mean so much to me, the films that I do," the A Quiet Place star added to Howard Stern. "So that was tough."
RELATED: Emily Blunt Shoots Down Fantastic Four Rumors, Says Superhero Movies 'Are Not For Me'
Also during the interview, Blunt shot down rumors that she would be playing the Invisible Woman in the Marvel reboot of Fantastic Four. She also said the superhero film genre has become "exhausted."
"It's not that it's beneath me. It's not. I loved Iron Man, and I wanted to work with Robert Downey Jr.," said Blunt.
"It would have been amazing, but I don't know if superheroes are for me," the star added. "They're not up my alley. I think it's been exhausted. We are inundated. It's not that it's only the movies, it's the endless TV shows as well."
