In Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) bursts onto the scene as a teenange genius and a true force to be reckoned with, and it won't be long until fans get to meet her once again, this time in her own Disney+ series, Ironheart. Proving she is a superhero both onscreen and off, Thorne recently partnered with Puffs Power Pals, which provides a soft touch to the world's fiercest superheroes at Children's Healthcare Atlanta.

In this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, Thorne talks about what drew her to the Puffs Power Pals campaign and visiting the children taking part in it. She also talks about the scene between Shuri and Riri that she would have liked to see in the final cut of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and what she is most exicted for audiences to experience in Ironheart.

COLLIDER: So you are involved with the Puffs Power Pals, I wonder if you could tell us a little more about that, how you got involved with them?

DOMINIQUE THORNE: Yeah, there's almost always a little bit of room, or space, within the thinking of the folks that I'm honored to call my team about how and what we can be involved with or support that goes beyond the work on screen. And that looks like a variety of things, but one of the offers to come through that pipeline was from Puffs. And what they offered was an opportunity to collaborate with them and the Children's Healthcare of Atlanta through the Power Pals program, to show up for these kids who themselves are battling very real things in their very young lives, who themselves are demonstrating strength and power and force consistently.

And with the help of the hospital, identifying who those kids could be and taking some time to give them some joy and prayerfully some encouragement from someone that is also meant to represent a superhero such as Ironheart.

So today we went down there, and they all had these comic book style posters of themselves in superhero form with the costumes and the capes and the masks, and getting to see themselves on their own comic book cover.

Yeah, going down there and talking to them, trying to soften them up, open them up, get them to talk or laugh or share their favorite superhero pose, whatever the case is, almost whatever they were feeling up to. Truly, to make sure that whatever joy or strength or power that they associate with someone like Ironheart, that they also know that that is what is seen in them. And that's why, that's why she's there. That's why she's here, because this is the superhero room.

I love that. So speaking of Ironheart, I wanted to ask a couple questions about your time as the character. With Black Panther: Wakanda Forever streaming on Disney+ very soon, I wanted to know if there were any moments you shot that maybe didn't make that final cut, but you kind of wish everyone could have seen?

THORNE: I think the main thing that I think of was probably - and what's funny is that the audio for this moment actually made the cut, but the visuals did not, which I'm totally okay with, but there were a couple moments in the cave in Talokan between Shuri and Riri that really work to establish, I think, more of a sisterhood between them. It connects them a little bit more on the things that we all associate with these two women, which is their intellect, their brilliance, the naturally occurring brilliance that they possess. In some of those cave sequences we got to see them notice that in each other, which, for both of these characters is almost like a breath of fresh air, and also something completely new.

Definitely like a bit of a gift in, I think, our opinion at the time, to get to see them speak their language and not have to translate it for, in Shuri's case, staff to execute, or in Riri's case, professors to understand her, but just to speak freely and to be understood and supported. And from that point, get to bond and know more about each other and talk about...

There were moments talking about how Riri came to build her first machine, and Shuri talking about the impact that her brother had on her. But like I said, there were bits and pieces of that audio that kind of covered the montage sequence that later came up. So it does feel, in a bit of a way, that there was the knowledge passed down that these two are bonded in some way, or there is a shared understanding here, which I think still accomplishes the goal.

I love that, too, especially because with Shuri and with Riri, they do kind of feel like two sides of the same coin, so that got to really come out on screen.

THORNE: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

What are you most excited for fans to see when you lead your own project in Ironheart?

THORNE: Let’s see. The two things that are coming to mind are for sure, for folks to get to see more of Riri. We just saw her in a very intense, very heightened situation. And I think it'll be super incredible to see folks' reaction to a deeper dive, a deeper look at her. But beyond that, really I'm looking forward to seeing the impact, or the effect, that the cast has on folks who are watching the show. We have so many just obnoxiously talented individuals in this cast. It's sickening how incredible some of these actors are, and comedians are. But who these folks are as humans is really, I think, what is special or different or unique about Ironheart because these are real people who have, in my opinion, the folks who comprise this core cast are folks who have committed to authenticity in one form or another in their own personal lives.

And so the characters that they play, I think, by nature of divine timing, by nature of God's will, in some way, does also reflect, I think, a deeper layer of authenticity than we may have seen in other shows or movies, or I think probably most notably by major franchises, written or televised, just major creative franchises when they do decide to be so bold as to be inclusive. And when they try to do that, I think that the most success is found from a genuine portrayal and a portrayal that comes from, it comes from wanting to service the power behind telling the truth. And that's definitely what is happening with Ironheart, or what has happened with Ironheart, at least insofar as creating that cast was concerned and that script and that crew. So, I think that there's just, there's something kind and something lovely awaiting folks with the release of that show, whenever that gift does descend.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is streaming on Disney+ now. Check out more from the Puffs Power Pals campaign below:

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