The following interview contains major spoilers for Marvel’s Black Widow film.
If you have not seen Marvel’s first entry into Phase Four of the MCU, what are you doing with your life?! After years of waiting, it’s finally time for Nat to get her own standalone film in the form of Black Widow. While introducing her adoptive family in the form of Yelena, Alexei, and Melina, the Cate Shortland flick also introduced a long awaited character: Taskmaster!
For those who have seen this new Black Widow, they’ll know that this version of Taskmaster is not Tony Masters created by David Michelinie and George Pérez. Instead, Black Widow‘s Taskmaster ties distinctly into Natasha’s own origin story. Revealed in the third act of the film, the Red Room soldier that has been hounding Natasha’s steps is actually Antonia Dreykov (Olga Kurylenko), General Dreykov’s daughter.
In an effort to defect to S.H.I.E.LD., Nat set off explosives meant to kill Dreykov years ago and Antonia was the collateral damage that has always haunted her. We heard mention of Dreykov’s daughter in the first Avengers film, when Nat was interrogating Loki, and in this standalone film, we learn the source of Nat’s guilt over her actions.
We spoke with Olga Kurylenko, who plays this MCU version of Taskmaster and we talked to her about her preparation for the role, her thoughts on her character’s development and relationship with her father, where Antonia could go in the future, and how she managed to keep such a big casting secret (even from her own mother!) Watch The Beat‘s exclusive chat with Kurylenko below!
Black Widow streams exclusively on Disney+ and is in theaters now!
