Why Scarlett Johansson fought for Aussie Cate Shortland to take charge of Marvel’s Black Widow

Aussie director Cate Shortland tells how action blockbusters weren’t even on her radar until Marvel and Scarlett Johansson came calling.

When Scarlett Johansson and Marvel first reached out to Cate Shortland to talk about the long-awaited stand-alone Black Widow movie, the Aussie director was a little confused.

So confused, in fact – and so far was the world of Avengers and action extravaganzas from her filmography and sensibility – that she didn’t actually realise what she was being asked.

“I was in Sydney working on a television series as a writer and my American agent called and said ‘Marvel would like to talk to you about Black Widow’,” she recalls with a laugh via Zoom call from her locked-down home town. “And I said ‘oh, I love that show’ – I thought she was talking about Black Mirror. And then she said ‘no, no, no – it’s Marvel, it’s this other thing’.”

Even once that was cleared up, Shortland wondered why the hell Kevin Feige and the Marvel Cinematic Universe had come knocking for what would be by far the biggest film in her directing career of two decades. Having cut her teeth on the beloved Aussie drama The Secret Life of Us, and then winning a stack of awards for her 2004 debut feature Somersault, Shortland’s CV only features two other movies, the 2012 foreign language drama Lore and the 2017 psychological thriller Berlin Syndrome.

Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), director Cate Shortland, Yelena (Florence Pugh) and Alexei (David Harbour) on the set of Black Widow. Picture: Jay Maidment ©Marvel Studios 2020

All were well received without setting the box office on fire, but there was nothing to suggest that Shortland would be an ideal candidate to take charge of the film to kick off Phase Four of the MCU, which has earned a staggering $30bn from its 23 films so far. At first she dismissed the idea as being crazy but the more she thought about it, the more she realised she admired what the studio juggernaut had already achieved. She was big fan of Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther and huge admirer of how Kiwi Taika Waititi had brought his indie film sensibility to Thor: Ragnarok.

Thankfully, Johansson, who had loved Lore in particular, had her heart set on Shortland and proved very persuasive and persistent in wooing her. The pair made contact via Zoom and found they had “a lot in common in the sort of stories we wanted to tell”.

“It was very gradual and it was a little bit of a courtship with she and I,” Shortland says. “We sent each other lists of our favourite songs and movies and really got to know each other and it’s been a great friendship, actually. She was my producer as well as my lead so that made a big difference.”

With Johansson – who has now played the title character seven times since first appearing in Iron Man 2 11 years ago – as her champion, Shortland was also buoyed by encouragement from Marvel boss Feige who told her: “All we want, Cate, is for you to bring your heart to it.”

Nevertheless, signing on to a $260m film without having even seen a script required a huge leap of faith.

Scarlett Johansson’s stand-alone Black Widow movie comes more than a decade after she first played the character.

Black Widow’s stand-alone film has been a long time coming and, as such, fan expectation has been sky high. While she’s been an integral part of The Avengers, the former Russian spy and assassin also known as Natasha Romanoff is one of the few major MCU characters not to have been given an origin story. Fans have gleaned through flashbacks and other stories that she’s an orphan raised to be a killer by the Russian KGB before switching her allegiance to the American intelligence agency S.H. I. E.L.D. and fighting for the good guys alongside other heroes including Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Thor and her sometime partner in espionage, Hawkeye. Black Widow is set after the events of Captain America: Civil War, with Romanoff on the run from the authorities and determined to destroy the sinister “Red Room” program that turned her into a lethal weapon and took away her chance at family life.

With such a traumatic past, not to mention (spoiler alert!), the character’s heroic demise while helping save the universe in Avengers: Endgame, Black Widow could have been grim and downbeat, but Shortland and Johansson had other ideas. They went through several iterations of the script, eventually enlisting Thor: Ragnarok writer Eric Pearson to infuse the grittiness and drama with some of the black comedy and soul that characterised Chris Hemsworth’s hugely successful third outing as the God of Thunder.

Black Widow was the biggest film Aussie director Cate Shortland had ever made by a huge margin. Picture: Jay Maidment. ©Marvel Studios 2021.

“I suppose what we knew is that we wanted to make something really fun,” Shortland says. “The expectation was that it was going to be really dark and traumatic and I didn’t want to make that either.”

Both Johansson and Shortland agree that the long delay in getting her own film also worked in favour for Black Widow and the actor who plays her. Johansson was excited to show a more vulnerable side of Romanoff as she reconnects with the closest thing she’s ever had to a family: sister figure Yelena (Florence Pugh), also a product of the Red Room; mother figure Melina (Rachel Weisz), a brilliant Soviet scientist; and buffoonish father figure Alexei (David Harbour) aka the Red Guardian, the USSR’s answer to Captain America.

Not only does the twice-divorced Johansson have her own family now, she has also become a prominent philanthropist and a champion of women in Hollywood as a vocal proponent of the #TimesUp and #MeToo movements.

“Scarlett has grown as a person and the character has grown because of her, and so has the political and social world that the writers and producers are living in,” Shortland says. “So, the 10 years that it has taken is actually really beneficial because we were able to be far blunter and have a lot more joy and humour about who she is, and facing also the darker parts of herself more honestly than we would have been earlier. And I think why people love (Black Widow) is the vulnerability and self-doubt, and those are as big struggles for her as the battles that she wages physically.”

Florence Pugh, Cate Shortland, Jeremy Renner, Mahershala Ali, Brian Tyree Henry, Tessa Thompson and Taika Waititi speak at the Marvel Studios Panel during 2019 Comic-Con International at San Diego Convention Center on July 20, 2019 in San Diego, California. Picture: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Shortland says that her biggest challenge on Black Widow wasn’t the scale of the production or the intricate action set pieces, but rather getting used to a set overwhelmingly dominated by men.

“I am used to working with a lot of women in positions of power and on this film, especially within the crew, it was very male,” she says. “Sometimes Scarlett and I would be the only women on set of 200 people. That had challenges in it but they are the same challenges that women go through in all walks of life. So, what I hope is that I am holding the door open and a lot of other female directors are coming through.”

Again, Johansson had her back and helped her remember that she was there for a very good reason. “She was really great because she would come on set and yell my name,” Shortland says with a laugh. “I know that sounds weird, but she was always forcing me to just be myself and not to bow down to any expectation. And I think she and I could really hold hands on this movie and move forward.”

Black Widow is in cinemas on Thursday and on Disney+ with Premier Access from Friday.