Though the “Thor” film, opening Friday, is about the Norse god of Thunder, co-star Kat Dennings says the film has some female empowerment as well.
Dennings, 25, plays Darcy Lewis, a sidekick to Natalie Portman’s astrophysicist, Jane Foster.
“There is a pretty great female presence in the film with Jane Foster and Darcy and Sif also, and Frigga, Thor’s mother,” Dennings said promoting the film at Comic-Con.
Rene Russo plays Thor’s mother, Frigga, while Sif is played by Jaimie Alexander (“Kyle XY”).
Dennings said she’s partial to the friendship Jane and Darcy share, something that’s new to this iteration of the “Thor” mythos.
“I really like, not to be biased, but I really like our relationship in the movie,” she said.
Darcy looks up to the more together Jane in the film.
“Darcy makes food for Jane, and mixes her Kashi in the morning and basically she’s a new invention. She’s not in the comics. She just sort of hopes to be like Jane one day.”
Since Darcy Lewis is a new character who hasn’t appeared in the Marvel Comics on which the movie is based, Dennings said she didn’t have any particular comic-book counterpart to embody.
“I’ve read a lot of the comic books just growing up, and I sort of felt, for me anyway, that I should sort of view the script as its own thing and not try to compare and contrast the previous stuff, and just treat it like its own little universe,” she said. “And Darcy wasn’t in the comics, so I didn’t have to worry about continuity or anything like that.”
Dennings said working with director Kenneth Branagh, a successful actor in films including “Hamlet” and “Henry V,” was an “amazing experience.”
“He’s someone I always idolized for acting,” Dennings said. “I’ve seen ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ at least 800,000 times. He’s just so gifted in that there isn’t one moment that wasn’t explained thoroughly. There wasn’t a second, for me at least, that I didn’t completely understand what was going on, because he tells you everything, and he makes sure you’re not feeling lost. I can’t say enough.”
Dennings said Branagh asked questions of his actors that would lead them to their own solution to what the character is going through.
“The fact that you had to come up with it yourself really made it part of you and inside of you,” Dennings said. “It was a really amazing experience, and he has infinite ideas for how to attack something and just infinite good mood. That’s crazy. Every day was fun.”
