Shang-Chi
Best known for his role as Jung on the hit Canadian sitcom Kim's Convenience, Simu Liu used to dress up as Spider-Man for children's birthday parties early in his acting career. Little did he know he would be joining the MCU as Shang-Chi, with his casting announced at San Diego Comic-Con 2019. Or maybe he did know, as the 32-year-old actor tweeted just one year earlier, "OK @Marvel, are we gonna talk or what #ShangChi."
In a 2021 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Liu recalled receiving the fateful phone call.
"It was July 16th, 2019, about 6:30 p.m., early evening. I had just woken up from a nap, and I was in my underwear, eating shrimp crackers," Liu said. "My dog was napping in my apartment, and I just remember getting a call from an unknown number in Burbank, California. And just hearing Kevin Feige's beautiful, booming voice on the other end, telling me that my life was going to change forever, was pretty memorable."
Feige, the president of Marvel Studios, revealed to Rotten Tomatoes that Marvel considered hundreds of actors for the role before Liu "came up relatively late in the process" and won them all over.
"He's the real deal," Feige said. "Bringing a new Marvel hero into the fold is never easy, and there is always a lot of pressure on us and I'm sure on the actors, but Simu has pulled it off in ways that again, I'm very excited for audiences to finally see in September."
Iron Man/Tony Stark
The man who started it all...was basically the last person Marvel wanted to hire to play Tony Stark, a role that now is forever tied to Robert Downey Jr. Director Jon Favreau fought to land Downey, despite his troubled past that included stints in prison and rehab.
"We didn't want to just go with a safe choice. The best and worst moments of Robert's life have been in the public eye. He had to find an inner balance to overcome obstacles that went far beyond his career. That's Tony Stark," Favreau explained to USA Today, drawing comparisons between the actor and the character. "Robert brings a depth that goes beyond a comic book character having trouble in high school, or can't get the girl."
And Downey took the role seriously, offering notes and requesting multiple takes to really nail a scene. "I'm more diligent than I used to be," he said. "I want to show Jon he was right to have faith in me. Whatever questions might have arisen about my life weren't issues with him."
The risk paid off big time, delivering the world's most successful franchise ever, and turning Downey into one of Hollywood's most-sought after (and highest paid) stars, staging the ultimate comeback.
"He's an unparalleled talent. He's an amazing actor. He has an amazing personality and an amazing persona that we thought could be tapped into in an amazing way," Marvel boss Kevin Feige gushed to The Toronto Sun. "We knew he was a great actor and we knew he was unbelievably charismatic and he'd be able to bring Tony Stark to life in an unbelievable way. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the MCU would not exist without Robert Downey Jr."
While Downey really was Favreau's first and only choice to play Iron Man, other actors who were considered were Clive Owen, Timothy Olyphant, and Sam Rockwell. The latter ended up being cast as one of the main villains in Iron Man 2.
Captain America/Steve Rogers
Some were surprised when Evans, then 29 and best known for the less-than-stellar Fantastic Four movie, was named by Marvel as their guy for 2011's Captain America: The First Avenger and the emotional anchor for the entire Phase 1 run. But it was far from an easy process.
"Casting Captain America was super hard. I started to think, 'Are we not going to be able to find Captain America, and if we can't, what are we going to do with Avengers? Is the whole thing going to fall apart?'" Feige recalled to Vanity Fair. "And, then, finally opening ourselves up to Chris Evans, who we had initially sort of just looked past because he was Johnny Storm in a Fantastic Four franchise. Then, bringing him in and showing him the artwork, showing him what was happening in this movie, and he took a weekend to decide.
"Chris Evans has embodied Captain America as well as any actor has ever embodied an iconic pop-culture figure like that," Feige continued. "I go back to Chris Reeve as Superman as the gold standard, and I think Evans is right there. I couldn't imagine anybody else."
But Evans has admitted to being hesitant to take on the role and said he actually turned it down "a few times" before eventually signing on. "I was scared," he admitted to Jimmy Kimmel, explaining the daunting number of films he'd be signing on for and his general "social anxiety with this industry" were major factors.
Of course, he came around in the most Cap way possible: "I was saying no out of fear, really," Evans said. "You can't do anything out of fear. You can't be doing something because you're scared. It ended up kind of clicking to me in the way that whatever you're scared of, push yourself into it."
Almost Captain Americas
A few big names allegedly went in for Cap, including Channing Tatum, Garrett Hedlund, Scott Porter, Chace Crawford...and Dane Cook?!
"[I] actually am going in to meet on 'Captain America,' which is kind of cool," the comedian spilled to MTV in 2010. "After Superman, he was kind of my favorite." (Bit of advice? Don't say a DC superhero is your favorite when you're trying to land a Marvel movie!)
Of course, John Krasinski has told the story of how he made it far enough in the casting process to try on the suit.
"In my head I got the part. It was a big deal for me...when they asked me to test they actually allowed me to put on the suit, I was on a set," The Office fan favorite said on Conan. "It was all very interesting."
Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers
Like many of the superheroes that came before her, Brie Larson, an Oscar winner for her breakout performance in Room, was unsure she wanted to take on such an iconic role, one that has been teased as the most powerful person in the MCU.
"I was hesitant to even meet," she admitted to The Hollywood Reporter. "I was like, 'I don't think what comes with a movie like that is anything that I can harness and hold. I'm too much of an introvert. I'll just collapse.' But then they started talking to me about this film, and I was like, 'Drat, this is the culmination of a lot of things I've wanted.'"
For Feige, Larson was the perfect choice.
"With Captain Marvel, who has powers that approach a level that we haven't seen before in our films, you need to counter-balance that by finding somebody who is also very human and very relatable and can get into a groove with the audience, where they're willing to see her fly through the sun and punch a moon away from a spacecraft," he told Variety. "At the same time, we need her to land and have relatable flaws. Brie is a person you're going to want to go on this journey with."
Almost Captain Marvels
After losing out on the chance to cast Emily Blunt in two previous roles (more on those later), Marvel reportedly approached the Mary Poppins Returns star about finally joining their superhero ranks as the part-human/part-Kree Carol Danvers.
"I think, it's always for me, it's always about—and now, more so—what am I putting out there? What would be interesting for me and what would be interesting for people to see," Blunt told ScreenCrush when asked about the rumors. "So, if it's an awesome part, it doesn't matter if it's a Marvel movie or a tiny movie, I'd be up for it."
Other stars in contention reportedly included The Handmaid Tale actress Yvonne Strahovski and Katheryn Winnick.
Black Panther/T'Challa
In likely one of the easiest casting choices ever for Marvel, Feige revealed in an interview that Chadwick Boseman, known and celebrated for his turns as Jackie Robinson in 42 and James Brown in Get On Up, was their pick for the future king of Wakanda.
"We were sitting around a table. We were coming up with the story for [Captain America] Civil War [when] Nate Moore, our executive producer, suggested bringing in Black Panther because we were looking for a third party that wouldn't necessarily side with Cap or Iron Man. And almost instantly we all said 'Chadwick,'" Feige said at a 2018 press conference for the movie. "And in my memory, though maybe it was the next day, we got him on speaker phone right then."
No audition. No major negotiations. Just a phone call to Boseman, who was in Zurich promoting Get On Up. Feige said, "You hear people say this all the time when you're in a setting like this but he was the only choice."
The rest is history. Literally, as Black Panther was the first superhero movie to land a Best Picture Oscar nomination. It became the first MCU film to win any—let alone three—Academy Awards and is one of the highest-grossing movies of all-time. Wakanda Forever.
Boseman died in August 2020 at the age of 43 after a private four-year battle with colon cancer. Following the news of his passing, Marvel announced that it would not recast the part of T'Challa in Black Panther 2.
Thor
Then a relative unknown, Chris Hemsworth landed the coveted role of the Nordic god. But guess who was this close to beating him out for the role? Liam Hemsworth, his younger brother.
"I had a very early audition early on in the process, didn't go very well. My little brother had an audition, he almost got the part," Chris once revealed on Quora. "Then didn't ‘cause they said he's a bit young so they opened the casting back up."
He continued, "I was really angry that he almost got the part, so I came back in with a newfound fury. And actually had to call him and say, 'How was the audition? Give me some tips,' and he did, thankfully, and I got the part. So it was a very collaborative family event, that one. Motivated by a little brotherly rivalry!"
A report from Deadline confirmed that the casting director initially passed on the then 25-year-old Chris before he was eventually brought back in and put on tape, after which Feige and director Kenneth Branagh immediately signed off.
Almost Thors
Other names that were once in the mix, aside from the Hemsworth brothers? James Bond himself Daniel Craig, Grey's Anatomy star Kevin McKidd and WWE's Triple-H, as well as then-unknowns Charlie Hunnam (pre-Sons of Anarchy), Joel Kinnaman, and Alexander Skarsgaard, whose father Stellan Skarsgard would later join the film's cast as Dr. Erik Selvig.
After losing out on the role, Alexander Skarsgaard told MTV, "Yeah, I met with Kevin [Feige] a few times and the director [Kenneth Branagh]...There was definitely some truth in that, yeah."