Marvel Studios meets with a lot of actors all the time, and while plenty of them don’t end up joining the cinematic universe in any capacity, in many cases, Kevin Feige and his team will circle back around years down the line when another project comes up that the talent in question might be more suitable for.
It must be a bizarre situation for an actor to sit down for a chat with one of the most powerful figures in the industry, who tells you that you’d be a great choice for a character in one of the MCU’s upcoming movies, but he doesn’t tell you who that person is or what film he’s talking about.
That’s exactly what happened to Eternals star Kit Harington, though, who revealed in an interview with The Playlist that he was informed by the company’s chief creative officer that there was a part with his name written all over it, a year before the casting process for the cosmic blockbuster had even started.
“I had a general meeting with Kevin maybe a year prior to getting the call about this movie, just about their new phase, and that there’s something for me in it at some point. And they had me in mind and that was an exciting meeting to take. And then I got a call about this movie from Nate Moore, the producer, and I met with Chloe and they talked me through what this was about and the role that I’d fit into playing within it. And on that information, I said, ‘Yeah, I’d love to do that. Thank you’.”
You’d imagine Marvel would have been upfront with their intentions when they went to Angelina Jolie, but it’s fascinating to imagine Harington leaving the meeting and then waiting an entire year before someone from Marvel decided to follow up his interest in boarding what was eventually revealed to be Eternals.