On the cusp of her debut in “Jurassic World: Dominion,” actress DeWanda Wise is opening up about why she had to vacate her first shot at franchise filmmaking in the 2019 film “Captain Marvel.”
Wise was originally cast as the character Maria Rambeau, best friend to Brie Larson’s pilot-turned-superhero Carol Danvers in the Marvel Studios film, but ended up having to leave the role due to scheduling conflicts outside of her control.
“It wasn’t a choice,” Wise told Collider. “I committed to ‘She’s Gotta Have It’. When you commit to something, you commit to it. And it just so happened that when they decided to essentially expand the role in ‘Captain Marvel’ a little longer, a little larger, it conflicted with a very specific moment that we were shooting in Season 2, a very special episode that we shot that I would not trade for anything in the world when we shot in Puerto Rico.”
Wise played Nola Darling in Spike Lee’s Netflix series “She’s Gotta Have It,” and was contractually committed to the show’s second season, making her role in “Captain Marvel” impossible. The actress admitted the experience was a painful one.
“That was experientially, spiritually, personally one of the most remarkable and life-changing moments of my life,” Wise said. “So it was painful. It was painful to be told no at the time. It wasn’t something that I didn’t have to grieve and process and be like, wow, this was a really big opportunity that felt like, at the time, that it was taken from me, but now of course, when you play it back and you’re like, ‘Oh, I’m playing a pilot. Here’s why. Here’s why. That’s why this didn’t happen, so that I could do this in this way.’”
The actress also heaped praise on actress Lashana Lynch, who ended up taking on the role of Rambeau in “Captain Marvel” after her exit: “She’s so good!”
In the third “Jurassic World” film, Wise plays former Air Force pilot Kayla Watts, who ends up helping Chris Pratt’s Owen Grady and Bryce Dallas Howard’s Claire Dearing.
“Jurassic World: Dominion” opens in North America only in theaters on June 10.
