Karen Gillan on farewelling Guardians of the Galaxy and co-Dave Bautista’s budgie smugglers
Guardians of the Galaxy star Karen Gillan opens up on why she loves Australia and how it feels to say goodbye to her Marvel family after a decade.
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Karen Gillan isn’t sure if making two movies in quick succession Down Under quite qualify her for honorary Aussie status – but she’ll take it if it’s on offer.
“I would be honoured to be called that,” she says with a laugh from her adopted home of Los Angeles, ducking out from a hairdresser appointment ahead of a global promotional tour for Guardians Of the Galaxy Vol. 3.
The flame-haired Scottish actor, who plays the blue-skinned cyborg Nebula in the hit Marvel superhero franchise, was first here in 2021 with her Guardians colleagues enjoying the freedoms of Sydney filming Thor: Love and Thunder while film and TV productions were shut down just about everywhere else in the world.
She says she had an absolute blast alongside Chris Hemsworth on Taika Waititi’s famously party-like set and an even better time when co-star Dave Bautista hired a boat for a day on the harbour — even if the memory of the former WWE star sporting a pair of budgie smugglers is still indelibly etched on her brain.
“It was him and all of his makeup artists were in them, too,” Gillan recalls. “All of a sudden I just turned around and they’re all wearing that and I was like ‘you know what? Good on them’. It takes a certain level of confidence.”
She returned to this shores earlier this year to film the coming Russell Crowe thriller Sleeping Dogs in Melbourne, eating her way around the southern capital and indulging in extra-curricular delights such as the Australian Open final.
“I had such a good time and Sydney and Melbourne,” she says. “I feel like my serotonin levels just go up when I’m in Australia, truly. Granted both times I was there, I believe it was summer and I was coming out of the dead of winter but it was so great and it just felt like everyone was really down to earth. There was a certain realness to everyone that I sort of recognised from being in Britain, actually. I was like, ‘Oh, this doesn’t feel like a world away’.”
Gillan, who first shot to fame as Amy Pond, companion to Matt Smith’s 11th Doctor Who, was cast as Nebula a decade ago for the first Guardians film, released in 2014. Starring Chris Pratt (Star-Lord), Zoe Saldana (Gamora), Bautista (Drax) and the voices of Bradley Cooper (Rocket) and Vin Diesel (Groot), it surprised all comers by turning a group of comic book outliers into a genuine box office smash, raking in more than $1.1 billion at the box office and outperforming better known superhero movies such as Man Of Steel.
Gillian signed on without having read a script – even her audition lines were fake – and under the impression that it was a minor, villainous role as the sister-nemesis of Saldana’s Gamora and her stay in the ever-expanding Marvel Cinematic Universe would be a short one. Writer-director James Gunn had other ideas and two Guardians sequels, two Avengers movies, the Thor cameo and a Christmas Special later, Nebula has become a key player in the MCU.
“I always felt close to the character,” says Gunn, “and I love Karen portraying her. I think that she’s grown a lot – and I think Nebula has changed a lot because of Karen’s portrayal. It’s one of the most exciting and fun arcs in the MCU where she starts out as completely terrible sister, who is evil, and now she’s kind of the de facto leader of the Guardians Of the Galaxy.”
The fact that the character has changed from film to film – there were even two versions of her in the time-hopping Avengers: Endgame – and transformed from vengeful assassin to a wisecracking leader has been a rare acting luxury for Gillan.
“Usually you only got a couple of hours to tell the whole story, but I’ve been given loads of movies to tell the story and each time she has evolved. I don’t think she’s ever stayed on the same level from one movie to the next.
“Luckily, I’ve been able to explore all these different sides to her, and that’s because they’ve written such a great character and they have given me so much to work with, especially with the sibling dynamic and the relationship with her father and the deep trauma that she’s been overcoming over the course of these movies.”
Gillan says that playing Nebula for what might be the final time was a bittersweet experience for the Guardians cast and crew after a decade together. Not only is the story in the third chapter darker and more emotionally resonant, but the recurring theme of found family has spilled over into real life. Pom Klementieff, who plays Mantis was one of Gillan’s bridesmaids when she married American comedian Nick Kocher in May of last year, and she says she knows “for sure that we’re all going stay in each other’s lives”.
“There definitely is a family feel to this group of people,” she says. “We have come back together now over the course of nine years … so that’s not just one or two movies. This has been an ongoing thing for quite a long time.”
That tight bond was front and centre during the bumpy road to the third film, when Gunn was fired by Disney in 2019 for some off-colour jokes he’d made on Twitter a decade earlier. Not only did his devastated cast rally around him, helping ensure he was rehired the following year, they also offered provided practical support to the equally shattered director. Gillan and Klementieff stayed with their friend the night it happened to make sure he was OK (“we laughed and we talked and we cried,” says Gunn) and the following night Saldana and her husband cooked for him.
For Gillan, the prospect of making a Guardians film without Gunn just “didn’t feel right”.
“It also definitely wouldn’t have been as good,” she says. “Because these movies are him. They’re his identity. His vibe is all over them – the music taste, the sense of humour, the characters are all in some way an exploration of a side of him or someone close to him. And so for all those reasons, it wouldn’t have felt right to do it without him and I don’t think any of us were interested in doing it without him.”
Gillan says she’d jump at the chance to work again with Gunn, who is now the head honcho at superhero rival DC Studios, and is keen to do more directing herself, having earned critical acclaim with her debut feature, the indie drama The Party’s Just Beginning.
“I feel like there’s so many things I don’t know how to do,” she says of her work behind the camera, “and that’s one of the few things that I’m like, ‘Oh, I get this’.
“In terms of doing a big superhero film, that would be cool but I think that my interests lie a little bit more in the horror side of things. So if I was going to do a big-scale thing I think I would really love to venture into that.”
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is in cinemas from May 4.
Originally published as Karen Gillan on farewelling Guardians of the Galaxy and co-Dave Bautista’s budgie smugglers
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