When the latest full trailer for Thor: Love And Thunder dropped in late May, it generated a lot of questions about the upcoming Marvel movie, but it also featured some cool revelations – including the fact that Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie (whose real name we don’t know just yet) is fighting with a new weapon in the blockbuster: Zeus’ thunderbolt. Behind the scenes, wielding this new godly tool required Thompson to do some special training, and she pulls off some killer moves with it on screen (as audiences will witness themselves very soon). By the actor’s own admission, however, her skills with the bolt are nothing compared to those possessed by the MCU’s Zeus himself, Russell Crowe.
How does she know this? Not only did Tessa Thompson get to see what her co-star could do with the thunderbolt while cameras were rolling during production, but she also evidently watched him surreptitiously while he practiced with the prop outside of her on-set trailer.
As captured in the video at the top of this article, I had the pleasure of interviewing King Valkyrie herself during the Thor: Love And Thunder press day in Los Angeles this past weekend, and during our conversation I took time to ask her about the thunderbolt. She admitted that it’s not the easiest weapon to wield, and gave credit to Russell Crowe for what he was able to do with it:
No, it's pretty hard. And to be honest, gimme a couple more months with that thunderbolt and I might have really learned some tricks. I got okay with it, but Russell Crowe is so good, and I hope he doesn't mind that I'm saying this, but I watched him. He would rehearse sometimes outside of my trailer with it. And I would watch him Cause he is really good! He's like so, so fantastic at it.
I don’t know about you, but I’m totally imagining Tessa Thompson peeking through the curtains of her trailer at an in-costume Russell Crowe throwing and twirling his prop thunderbolt around like a professional sign spinner. It’s a mental image that makes me giggle every time I conjure it.
In all seriousness, though, the passion and enthusiasm that Tessa Thompson effused for her work behind the scenes of Thor: Love and Thunder was a wonderful thing to see. On top of expressing genuine remorse that she didn’t get more time to practice with Zeus’ legendary weapon in the making of the blockbuster, she talked about bonding with her weapons in Thor: Ragnarok – the sword Dragonfang and her two daggers – and explained that she created a kind of intimacy with them. She continued,
That's the thing: you spend... I remember when I had Dragon Fang and I was first training with that weapon and my two daggers, I would spend so much time you become intimate with them in a way. So the Thunderbolt was fun to wield, but it's not my weapon, so I forgive myself for not being perfect at it.
The funny irony of this is that the relationship between a hero and their weapon of choice is actually a running joke in Thor: Love and Thunder, and while I won’t spoil the details of it in this forum, Tessa Thompson explained that the gag was something that wholly developed on set:
That is like the funniest thing, 'cause that was actually something that really developed in the course of shooting the film, and then seeing it last night especially it works like a charm. It's just like so, so funny.
Audiences will get on this inside of this joke very soon, as Thor: Love And Thunder is now less than two weeks away from release (and buzz about the blockbuster is already growing). The Taika Waititi-directed Marvel Cinematic Universe blockbuster, starring Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale, Russell Crowe, and Tessa Thompson, arrives in theaters everywhere on July 8 – and tickets are on sale now.
