Elizabeth Olsen, pretty famously, has done a lot of her own stunts in her Marvel Cinematic Universe career. Most recently she did most of her own stunts in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, where she was a main antagonist. That doesn’t mean she’s ready to be a full-time daredevil, however.
While she doesn’t mind doing stunts now and then, Olsen told Stephen Colbert in an interview on The Late Show that it might have been “a waste of everyone’s time because a stunt double does it so much better.”
“I have done so many Marvel movies!” Olsen laughs. She recalls how she used to get too giggly during wire work because she felt like her “stomach just left her.” Some people love that feeling. She’s not a fan.
Olsen gives a specific exampl: “There is one [stunt] in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness where I had to be dropped from 9.14 m up and land. They wanted to drop me pretty quickly so that it looked like it had an impact, but I kept landing like Peter Pan, kind of like fencing? I was like, ‘Just use the double. This is so ridiculous — there is a double for a reason. Like, face replace…’ They do it all the time.”
For some reason — kind of unknown to Olsen, it seems like — the filmmakers decided to use her take in the movie. “And they used it! I am landing and I look like Peter Pan! Like I’m fencing. It was ridiculous.” Olsen praises the technology available and said that despite this she filmed nearly every stunt in the movie. “I kept waiting for [my Jack Nicholson] moment — ” she says, referencing his role in Witches of Eastwick, where the film ends with Nicholson covered in feathers. She describes being soaking wet, covered in oil, dripping blood. “At what point are we just going to blow feathers on me, because this is getting ridiculous!”