The 2025 movie schedule delivered The Fantastic Four: First Steps to fans a couple of months ago, but while it was the first official MCU entry for Marvel’s First Family, it was hardly the first time we’d seen them on the big screen. That movie’s Vanessa Kirby played the third major iteration of Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman, after Jessica Alba and Kate Mara. Now, the star of 2015’s negatively reviewed Fantastic Four has opened up about her “messy experience” making the film and the one plus she took away from it.
What Did Kate Mara Say About Making Fantastic Four Being ‘Messy’ And The One Bright Side?
In 2015, it was rare for a superhero movie to be both nearly universally trashed by critics and abandoned by fans to the point of it flopping, but that’s exactly what happened with Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four. Though the movie was underwhelming (at best) the end product came after a widely reported tumultuous filming process that led to many rumors of behind the scenes antics on set.
Star Kate Mara (who’s also known for her work in shows like House of Cards and movies such as Brokeback Mountain, Shooter, and The Martian) was a part of that production, along with castmates Jamie Bell, Michael B. Jordan, Miles Teller, and Toby Kebbell. She’s opened up before about the filming of that infamous superhero bust, and talked about things like the one regret she has from her time on set, but she recently appeared on the Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast and opened up to host Ted Danson about working with Bell:
[Jamie and I] were friends, but not — we didn’t really know each other. And then we made the Fantastic Four movie together, which was [a] really interesting experience…. [It was] rough, not a great experience. It was a mess. Yeah, just a messy experience.
I think a lot of people have had work experiences like this, as they certainly aren’t limited to those in the entertainment business. You get a job and realize that everything in the company is kinda fucked from top to bottom, and you just try to hang on long enough for all your benefits to kick in so you can start looking elsewhere. But, if you’re lucky, you at least make a good friend or two among your fellow, suffering co-workers like Mara did with Bell. She continued:
We got to know each other on it, and I thought, ‘Oh, he’s so great.’ I just thought he was the best, and he was single and I was trying to set him up with all these people. Because I thought, 'I’ve got to set him up with someone. He’s the biggest catch. How is he not with someone amazing?’ I just didn’t know that I was the person I was looking for. It took me a year to figure that out.
OK, so this probably happens to fewer people who have shitty work experiences, but good for Mara and Bell! Now that we can all see where this is going, let’s just go ahead and get right to their big revelation:
I think because we were friends for so long, that we were both just in our minds, like this is the relationship. And then, yeah, we fell in love on the press tour of that movie, because it was trauma bonding.
Somehow, just working on Fantastic Four wasn’t quite enough of “trauma bonding” for the friendly actors to go from being buddies to dating, but enduring the press tour (which I can imagine was filled with awkward questions from the media and memories of filming that everyone had been trying to forget) tipped the duo right over the romantic edge.
In case you’re wondering, Mara and Bell married in 2017, and now have a young son and daughter. So, it’s more than understandable that the star has been able to take away at least one big positive from that “messy” movie.
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