Evangeline Lilly’s Hope van Dyne may have taught Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang how to fight in the first Ant-Man, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t above learning some new moves for the upcoming Ant-Man and the Wasp.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Wasp actress Evangeline Lilly talked about working to fully create her character throughout the production, whether that meant making sure Hope was competent without becoming "school marm-ish," or figuring out how to literally fight like a girl.
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“In her fight scenes,” she explained, “as trivial as it might seem, I really pushed and fought for her to fight with elegance, grace and femininity. She moves differently than a man. I wanted her to have a signature style that little girls, like I was when I was a feminine, girly little girl, would be able to fall in love with, emulate and relate to in their own movements.”
“When we did Ant-Man,” Lilly continued, “I had to study a little bit of Muay Thai and MMA-style fighting. And MMA-style fighting is distinctly masculine, it's got a very masculine posture and a very masculine attack, and that was so difficult for me because I don't move that way naturally. I really wanted to change that in this film. I wanted to move the way my body wants to move, as a more graceful, feminine woman.”
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Ant-Man and the Wasp, starring Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer, Michael Peña, Laurence Fishburne and Hannah John-Kamen, opens nationwide this Friday.