Here’s some news for you: Julia Louis-Dreyfus is very funny. So funny, in fact, that a lot of her scenes in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever were cut for that very reason.
Louis-Dreyfus plays Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, or Val, in a few Marvel movies. She’s the director of the Central Intelligence Agency in the MCU and she personally recruited Yelena Belova and former Captain America John Walker.
So far, she’s appeared in Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Black Widow and of course Black Panther 2. She also reportedly has a huge role in the upcoming Phase 5 ender film Thunderbolts. The new info came from the director’s commentary of the film, according to sources, which includes not only Ryan Coogler but also co-writer Joe Robert Cole and cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw.
Apparently some of the scenes with Louis-Dreyfus had too much humor in them. The trio discussed Val’s first appearance in the movie and revealed that there was a whole bunch left on the cutting room floor.
Cole: “How many different versions of the dialogue in this scene did we have?”
Coogler: “In this one? Oh, boy. (laughs) Man, tons. Tons, man. Big shout-out to Joe. And then I got to work with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, which is awesome. She’s a lovely woman. Crazy funny. Some of the stuff she would do was too funny for the movie. I can’t… Man.”
What about the scene where Val is with Ross in his car chatting it up? It was originally supposed to be in a garage, Cole said.
Cole: “I feel like we had this in the garage at one point. (laughs) Bro, there was like, all sorts of, like… This conversation.”
Arkapaw: “It was in a garage.”
Coogler: “It was. Yeah, I wasn’t–”
Arkapaw: “It wan’t supposed to be.”
Coogler: “Yeah, it was in a garage, and we moved it outside. And Autumn got mad at me.”
Arkapaw: “I was waiting for you to bring that up.”
Coogler: “I think I moved it at the last second. She was like, ‘Dude, we rigged this whole thing. What are you doing?’ I’m like, ‘I think I’ll put it outside.’ She’s like, ‘I’m going to kill you.’
Arkapaw: “But it’s so much better outside.”
Coogler: “It came out good.”
Arkapaw: “And so much better outside. And I could not see it that day.”
Val is one of the more mysterious characters in the MCU, and despite her (hidden) hilarity no one really knows if she’s a good guy or a bad guy. In the book Marvel’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: The Art of the Series, Louis-Dreyfus pointed this out.
She said there’s “a lot of mystery in terms of her background” and that “whether she’s a good guy or a bad guy remains to be seen… she’s sort of living in a gray zone.” She does like the idea of a “female mastermind,” adding the caveat that she doesn’t want to “get too political on anybody.”
“It’s all a plan. She’s about three steps ahead of everyone, and that’s gobs of fun to play.” Not too much fun though, because then those scenes will get cut again.
