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Julia Garner knows silver looks good on her.
The actress, 31, was recently asked about how she handled the backlash to her gender-swapped role as the Silver Surfer in “Fantastic Four: First Steps.”
“Oh, well, you know. I said, ‘I’m just going to still do my job,’” Garner told the BBC at the Marvel film’s red carpet premiere in London on Thursday.
Garner also noted that she’s portraying Shalla-Bal, a female iteration of the Silver Surfer, and not Norrin Radd, the male version of the character who was played Doug Jones and voiced by Laurence Fishburne in 2007’s “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.”
“Also, it’s Shalla-Bal, so it’s different,” she explained.
Garner went on to acknowledge the Marvel fandom’s massive hype for the film, which comes out later this month.
“I was just happy that people are resonating with it, just like any other project,” she shared. “I’m grateful to be at this dance, to be completely honest with you.”
Garner’s co-stars include Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm/Invisible Woman, Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm/The Thing and Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm/Human Torch.
While speaking to Entertainment Tonight on the carpet, Garner reacted to her Silver Surfer voice going viral on the internet and launching a new TikTok trend.
“I was just acting and prepping,” the “Ozark” alum stated. “To be honest, I don’t even have a TikTok, so my friends were sending me all these TikToks, and I couldn’t even open it. So I’m just happy people are liking it.”
Back in April, Garner opened up about her shock at learning she was playing Silver Surfer when she met with director Matt Shakman.
“I was confused because I was like, ‘Wait, isn’t the Silver Surfer a man?'” she recalled to Entertainment Weekly. “I was just like, ‘Okay, well, I’ll play anything.'”
“I was a very big fan of Matt’s, so there was already, in my mind, like, ‘I should probably meet with Matt Shakman because he’s a very smart director and I love his work.’ And then he was explaining to me that it’s actually Shalla-Bal and that whole thing,'” the three-time Emmy winner added.
Garner also spoke about how she prepped for the role in her first superhero movie.
“I knew who the Silver Surfer was, and I got to know the Silver Surfer more when I signed on to the project,” she shared. “I really dived in. I read a lot of the Fantastic Four and Silver Surfer comics before starting the project, and I knew that this ‘Fantastic Four’ was going to be told in a very different way than even the other movies.”
“Fantastic Four: First Steps” comes out in theaters July 25.
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