The audition that went wrong
Before she became Wanda Maximoff in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Elizabeth Olsen auditioned for one of television’s most famous roles: Daenerys Targaryen in HBO’s Game of Thrones. The part eventually went to Emilia Clarke, and Olsen has been refreshingly honest about why. Looking back, she described the audition as “pretty horrible”.
Olsen has explained that she read for the role in a small room with only the casting director present, and quickly felt she was not doing the character justice. Daenerys needed to project enormous authority and presence, and Olsen has said that, at that moment in her career, she simply did not pull it off. She has even joked that she wishes the audition had come at a different point in her life.
Her frankness surprised fans, many of whom had long wondered how the series might have looked with her in the role. With the Game of Thrones world continuing through House of the Dragon, some have speculated that she could yet appear in the franchise, although nothing has been announced.
A decade as the Scarlet Witch
Olsen made her first appearance as Wanda Maximoff in a post-credits scene of Captain America: The Winter Soldier in 2014. She then took on a much larger role in Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) and returned in several more Marvel films over the following years. Her Disney+ series WandaVision (2021) earned critical acclaim and Emmy nominations, including one for Olsen herself.
The role gave her financial stability and global fame, but it came at a cost. In interviews, including one with The New York Times, Olsen has said her Marvel commitments meant turning down projects that were closer to the kind of films she loves as a viewer and the kind of actor she wanted to be.
Missing out on The Lobster
One of the films she has said she regrets missing is Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Lobster, which won the Jury Prize at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival and later earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Olsen has explained that she was under a Marvel contract at the time and could not make the schedule work.
She has spoken about feeling frustrated during that period: she had job security, but felt she was losing parts of her creative identity, and the further she moved away from independent cinema, the less likely she was to be considered for those roles.
Finding her place in the MCU
Over time, Olsen has become more comfortable with the franchise, helped largely by the creative freedom of WandaVision. She went on to play a central role in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), which opened to around $187 million at the US box office. She has said she would be open to a standalone Scarlet Witch film, but only if the story were genuinely strong. In her view, the best films come from a clear point of view rather than from a plan to produce more content.
Alongside Marvel, Olsen continues to take on smaller dramatic projects, including the true-crime series Love & Death and independent films, which shows she is still keen to balance blockbusters with the character-driven work she loves.
