It would be a different world without the power of movie magic; we would’ve been deprived of Jurassic Park‘s dinosaurs, horror productions would probably have more waivers to sign, and Natalie Portman may have remained at chest-level with Chris Hemsworth despite her new mantle as the Mighty Thor in Thor: Love and Thunder.
It’s no secret that the exercise and nutrition portion of the process is a mainstay when it comes to preparing for superhero roles in the MCU, but Portman presented an interesting challenge for the studio, as all the strength training and protein in the world wouldn’t allow her to add twelve more inches to her five-foot-three stature.
In an interview with Variety, Portman revealed the studio’s rather low-tech solution to granting her additional height, namely in the form of a taller path that Portman walked and stood upon while her costars remained on ground level.
“As a 5-foot-3 woman, I don’t know that I’m ever going to be cast again as a 6-foot character. I really relished people seeing me as big. We’d rehearse the scene, they’d see the path, and then they’d build a path that was like one foot off the ground or whatever, and I would just walk on that. It was actually one of our running jokes. They’d all have to navigate my deck!”
It caused a great many laughs for the cast and crew, particularly for Tessa Thompson, who portrays Thor’s ally Valkyrie in the movie. Thompson recalled the jokes that sprung up from the solution between fits of laughter.
“They would call it a deck, but depending on the accent, sometimes it sounded like something else, because we’re all children.”
Thompson is, of course, referring to Hemsworth’s Australian accent, which alters the pronunciation of the word “deck” in a way that some may find particularly silly.
Thor: Love and Thunder releases to theaters on July 8.