Evangeline Lilly on South of Heaven, Ant-Man and why she doesn’t need the Real Steel reboot

Evangeline Lilly is right at home in blockbusters such as Ant-Man but reveals she wants to sink her teeth into something real.

Evangeline Lilly admits she feels very comfortable in huge franchise movies such as the Hobbit trilogy and Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp – but they still leave her with a few trust issues.

The Canadian actor finished up filming her third Ant-man film, Quantumania, late last year, her first outing as Hope Van Dyne – aka the Wasp – since 2019’s Avengers: Endgame and it was like she’d never been away.

“It actually just felt like getting back into a comfortable car seat,” she says with a laugh.

“My bum fits into the groove of those tent-pole films.”

She does admit though, that there are parts of the blockbuster experience that she still finds challenging, not least the amount of trust she has to put in her directors – whether it’s the Hobbit’s Peter Jackson, Ant-Man’s Peyton Reed or Endgame’s Russo brothers – when the actors are just a part of the huge, effects-driven action scenes.

Evangeline Lilly in a scene from South of Heaven.

“I’m a bit of a control freak,” she admits.

“I really need to have my hands on the wheel in most things that I participate in and so it’s a challenge for me.

“It’s an exercise in letting go and in trust. And you would think with Marvel’s track record that wouldn’t be too difficult to just let go and trust them. But it’s still hard for me because when you’re an actor, you’re basically standing there metaphorically with your clothes off. And it’s hard to not feel like you want to understand what’s going on when you’re naked.”

That said, she says the difficult, Covid-disrupted filming of Quantumania, which will be released next year and reunites her with co-stars Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer, has left her with the satisfying feeling that “it might be the best out of the three”.

“There was just moments where I’d be doing a scene and think ‘oh s---, we really did something there’. So it was good performance-wise, character wise, there’s lots of really good, rich, deep stuff in there.”

A desire for something more grounded in reality was one of the reasons Lilly jumped at the chance to star opposite Jason Sudeikis in South of Heaven.

“I loved being in the sweet simplicity of an indie film where it’s just all about the performance,” she says.

“It’s all about the time to rehearse. It’s all about playing with the words and emotions. It’s a luxury for an actor because it’s about the acting. Whereas when half of your film is CGI, it’s not.”

Evangeline Lilly and Jason Sudeikis as battling couple Annie and Jimmy in South of Heaven.

Ted Lasso star Sudeikis plays recently released convict Jimmy in the indie crime thriller, and Lilly is Annie, the girlfriend who stuck by him all the years he was behind bars but is now dying of cancer.

Jimmy is determined to stay on the straight and narrow to support her through her final months, but a shady parole officer and a local crime lord put paid to their dreams of domestic bliss.

Lilly didn’t have to look far from home for her inspirations for the ever-optimistic Annie – her father is battling leukaemia but she says he has “this incredible way of being very self-deprecating and funny and relaxed about the whole thing”.

She also found a blogger who was sharing her innermost thought and feelings about her late-stage lung cancer and her swings between humour, hope, rage and despair resonated deeply for a character trying to make the most of life while staring death in the face.

“She was always very light and loose about her cancer,” says Lilly.

“Then there will be these moments in the blog where her anger and her fear and her frustration will come through. But one didn’t negate the other.”

Lilly says that Annie is much closer to her own life than the serious, feisty, kick-ass heroines she often plays so convincingly that she thinks co-stars are sometimes startled when she fronts up on set.

Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly as Ant-Man and the Wasp. Lilly finished filming on the third film, Quantumania, last November.

“I think a lot of co-stars who come to work with me are often disappointed when they realise I’m just a kooky, silly, ridiculous woman and not that at all,” she laughs.

“And so it was fun for me to be able to just take off the scowl and put on a smile and laugh and be soft and silly and irreverent and self-deprecating – all those things that I am in real life.”

Conversely, Lilly was surprised by Sudeikis’ darker turn in South Of Heaven, during which time he was also working hard finalising the first season of Ted Lasso.

Though they both share a thick, Southern drawl, the ever-optimistic, moustachioed football coach and the haunted, hunted Jimmy could hardly be more different, leaving Lilly stunned when she finally got to see the Emmy-winning, feel-good comedy.

“It’s so bizarre to know somebody and work with them and have it feel one way but then to become a big fan of something. It was a bit strange to watch him in Ted Lasso and be a huge fan of the show and be like, ‘but I know this guy, he is my friend’,” she says.

Evangeline Lilly says that working on huge-budget films such as Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy is an exercise in trust.

As well as she and Sudeikis got on making South Of Heaven, Lilly reserves special praise for Aussie A-lister Hugh Jackman, with whom she worked in 2011 on Real Steel.

“Hugh continues to go down as my probably my favourite co-star I’ve ever worked with,” she says.

“He was a consummate professional, a consummate gentleman. He was kind he was really good at what he does. He just has such a disarming presence. And he’s very easy on the eye – it’s not hard to look across the way and see Hugh Jackman for three months.”

News emerged last week that the family sports drama about fighting robots is being remade as a TV series by Disney+.

Lilly says she is not involved and can’t decide whether she’s mildly ticked off not to have been asked, or grateful that it spared her the decision of whether to tinker with such a fond memory.

A decade ago she’d have jumped at the opportunity to make a sequel, but now she’s not so sure.

Evangeline Lilly says that Hugh Jackman was her favourite co-star ever in Real Steel.

“Part of me wants to be like, ‘Listen guys, a Real Steel series and I don’t even know about it – what’s going on in the world?’,” she says.

“But I think if they had come to me and asked if I wanted to do it, there’s very little likelihood that I would want to unless it was Hugh Jackman and (director) Shawn Levy again.

“When a film doesn’t have sequels, it becomes a little bit more sacred. I think about the film ET and, knock on wood, I pray that nobody ever touches it. I don’t want a sequel, I don’t want a remake I want ET to stay ET and hopefully that’s what happens with Real Steel and it becomes special because it’s left alone. Our version anyway.”

South Of Heaven is now available on DVD and to buy and rent on digital platforms.

Originally published as Evangeline Lilly on South of Heaven, Ant-Man and why she doesn’t need the Real Steel reboot