By Jim Frye
The wait is finally over! The New Mutants hits theaters Friday, giving eager fans their first look at a coming-of-age story about five confused kids who discover their own unique powers in an epic struggle for survival. The cast and director “gathered” on Zoom recently to fill us in on all the secrets from the set. Directed by Josh Boone and written by Boone and Knate Lee, the film stars Emmy® nominee Maisie Williams (Rahne), Anya Taylor-Joy (Illyana), Charlie Heaton (Sam), Alice Braga (Dr. Reyes), Henry Zaga (Roberto), and Blu Hunt (Dani).
The New Mutants storyline, a “spin-off” from the X-Men comics, debuted in Marvel Graphic Novel No. 4 in 1982, introducing a whole new cast of characters who had little affiliation with the students from Professor Charles Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. In the film, Dr. Reyes keeps watch over four teenage mutants at a remote psychiatric hospital, trying to help them understand and control their powers. The arrival of a fifth teen mutant, though—Hunt’s Dani character—begins a series of events that leads to a fight for their lives.
Although she’s appeared on the television series The Originals, this was Hunt’s first feature film, and the fact that she was auditioning alongside Maisie Williams, who had become a worldwide sensation on the TV series Game of Thrones, made her a bit nervous. “It was definitely really crazy,” said Hunt. “I watched Maisie’s show—I couldn’t believe that I was even there. Our whole relationship between our characters and then us as friends on set was really amazing. It really got me through making the movie. My favorite part of Dani, honestly, is her relationship with Rahne.”
Williams said that she’s had time to look back on her character, Rahne, with new eyes. “I feel like at this time in our lives, you do change a lot. When I was playing Rahne, and I had on the wig and the tatty clothes, it made me feel, as an actor, very uncomfortable,” she said. “I think for me, looking back now, actually that was all perfect. To feel that way and to feel uncomfortable in the clothes, that’s who she is. She isn’t just born with every ounce of confidence. Looking back I’m like, ‘Wow, you’re really uncomfortable.’ But, it works for the role.”
Zaga agreed. “I relate to this discomfort that Maisie is talking about,” he said. “I think all of our characters have some sort of physical discomfort, coming either from our powers or just from growing pains. My character, Roberto, is trying to live up to a facade, a pretend confident 17-year old who’s actually just craving love and is really sensitive. He just can’t face that because it causes so much pain. So, I think we can all relate to that discomfort.”
The struggles that teenagers often go through was a key point for Taylor-Joy. “Any opportunity to go back to teenage-dom is not necessarily the most fun experience, but you definitely learn a lot about yourself afterwards,” she said. “It’s interesting because I think we all came into this knowing that whilst we were making a super hero movie, we weren’t really making a super hero movie. We were making a film about people who were having a tough time understanding themselves and figuring out their place in the world. And so, to make it a bit more cinematic, we added powers. But, I do think any teenager that’s going through the growing pains, trying to understand where they fit in, no longer a child, what is this weird adult world—I think they’ll definitely connect with it.”
Heaton, who is known for his work on the TV show Stranger Things, appreciated the comics for source material, but felt he needed to dig deeper for his character. “For me, at least, preparing was definitely kind of looking more at pulling from the script itself than necessarily the comics,” he said. “The comics helped with the look and style. But to make these characters real was a conversation with Josh and looking at the script and then just going with instinct. That was kind of how I approached the character of Sam and this idea of power and when you have something inside of you that is manifested. You’re trying to learn how to control it.”
Braga added that she thinks the film will resonate with many teens who may be able to connect with the emotional core of the story. “When you read the script or when you see the story, you can see how many teenagers, I think, are going to connect with each one of the characters in different ways,” she said. “Maybe someone is going to connect more to Maisie’s character, or more with Charlie’s character or Anya’s, because I think that, in a brilliant way, it talks a lot about young people and going through their lives, being mutant or not… that metaphor of talking about being accepted. It really goes deep into these kids, young adults, that are figuring out life and going through these feelings.”
“The movie was really made for teenagers who are outsiders, people who feel out of place, and who are going through a tough time in general. I wrote this with my very best friend in the world (Knate Lee),” said Boone. “We’ve known each other since we were little babies. Our moms are best friends. And we grew up in the 1980s reading Marvel Comics, and I still vividly remember to this day seeing the covers of the New Mutants comics that [artist Bill Sienkiewicz] started working on. I’d just never seen anything like that before. So, they really captured my imagination, and I thought about them really for years. I remember being in L.A. when I first moved out, in an apartment, 10 years before I even made a movie. I had a stack of New Mutants comics, and I was like, maybe one day…”
That one day has arrived for Boone, and we can see the results when The New Mutants, from Twentieth Century Studios in association with Marvel Entertainment, opens in theaters Friday, August 28.
