Loki’s Gugu Mbatha-Raw reveals she turned down superhero roles in the past

She’s currently starring alongside Tom Hiddleston as Ravonna Renslayer in Disney+’s Loki.

But in the past, actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw has ‘turned down’ superhero roles, revealing there have been times when ‘the tone of the piece just wasn’t my taste’.

While shooting a striking cover shoot for Porter magazine, the screen star, 38, explained: ‘How the violence is depicted, how the women are represented. Those things are important to me.’

Speaking in a new interview with Porter, the British star elaborated: ‘There have been a few I’ve auditioned for and not got. And one or two that I got and turned down.

‘Sometimes [the role] was so secretive, I was like, I’m not signing up to something where I don’t know what it is.

‘Sometimes, I wasn’t sure the character was going to have enough layers.’

As for Ravonna Renslayer, Mbatha-Raw gushed: ‘She’s an authoritative character. Morally ambiguous. She has to make some difficult choices. I loved that there is a complexity to her that I hadn’t seen in any of the [superhero] roles that had come my way before.’

Mbatha-Raw also recalled her days at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art alongside 40-year-old Tom – who was in the year below her.

Speaking fondly of the actor, Mbatha-Raw said: ‘He was blond. Sort of angelic. He seemed very… centered is probably the best word.’

The pandemic meant shooting for Marvel’s latest installment was pushed back by five months, however the show was one of the first to resume filming once the industry was given the green light.

Mbatha-Raw described the moment as ’emotional’.

She told the outlet: ‘It was emotional; the light at the end of the tunnel. There was a joy and relief to be back in this imaginary world.’

The actress looked striking in a series of high-fashion looks, posing in a beautiful frilled gown that featured lace-up detailing alongside a striking white dress with wraparound detailing, worn by Mbatha-Raw on the magazine’s cover. 

Elsewhere she donned a stunning green and blue ruffled gown alongside a luury beige raincoat. 

The Disney+ Marvel show garnered huge ratings in its debut on Wednesday, with more than 890,000 American households tuning in to see the debut of the series.

Loki, which began streaming Wednesday, got ‘the largest US premiere-day audience for any of Marvel’s Disney+ shows,’ according to Samba TV, which tracks streaming statistics.

The series also stars Owen Wilson as Mobius M. Mobius and Wunmi Mosaku as Hunter B-15, as well as Sophia Di Martino and Richard E. Grant.

The timeline of the show follows the famed Asgardian in the wake of 2018’s Avengers: Endgame.

Hiddleston was first seen as the character in Thor in 2011, and has gone on to appear in the role in 2012’s The Avengers, 2013’s Thor: The Dark World, 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok and 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War.

Director Kate Herron on Tuesday confirmed to Insider that the character is genderfluid and portrayed as such on the series.

‘He’s gender fluid in the Norse mythology and the comics and it felt like an important thing to, as you say, make sure it’s canon,’ Herron said. ‘I would say that details are marked in but it is something acknowledged.’

New episodes of Loki begin streaming on Disney+ each Wednesday.