Natalie Portman is excited to get jacked to play Mighty Thor

Natalie Portman will have a lot of weight on her shoulders when she begins filming Thor: Love and Thunder next year. Or will that be a lot of hammer? The 39-year-old is well aware that when she returns to the MCU she’ll be the first female to play the godly superhero, Thor. Just please, don’t call her Lady Thor.“She’s actually The Mighty Thor,” Portman told Serena Williams in an Instagram Live chat. “The comics had the female Thor when Jane becomes Thor, and she’s The Mighty Thor.” Now that fans have got that straight, Portman reveals that she’s also pretty excited to have a little more time to work on her physique for the role. “We haven’t started yet,” she said about filming in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. “More time to get jacked. Which I have not. I’ve got the carb-loading down, but not the exercise part.”

 

View this post on Instagram

 

yesterday — talking about all things @weareangelcity and the importance of giving female athletes the attention they deserve. Who else is watching the @nwsl championship today?? Watch the game on CBS and visit @serena to listen to our full conversation; (please excuse the weird tech glitches :)

A post shared by Natalie Portman (@natalieportman) on Jul 26, 2020 at 10:11am PDT

The actress added that she’s pretty pumped to begin filming in Australia in 2021 though, if it doesn’t get pushed again. “Obviously everything is weird because of pandemic time, who knows what’s happening,” she added. “It will be exciting and I’m interested to see if I can gain muscle.” She isn’t the only one who is excited. Fans have seen Portman’s take on the Jane Foster character in the past, when Portman played her in the first two Thor films, and again when she reprised the role in the star-studded 2019 project Avengers: End Game.The standalone movie was first announced at last year’s comic-con, back when it was still safe to attend such things in-person. At the time the powers-that-be revealed the film is based on the comic book storyline in which Jane Foster ultimately becomes the Mighty Lady Thor after Thor Odinson proves unworthy of picking up Mjölnir, (a.k.a. that famous hammer). Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson are reprising their respective roles of Thor and Valkyrie for the film, and Taika Waititi will also plop himself back into that director’s chair. In announcing the flick, Marvel also confirmed other female-led films like the standalone Black Widow and The Eternals starring Angelina Jolie.“They came to me. Obviously I wasn't written into the third Thor because of where it took place. It wasn't really on Earth and my character was on Earth,” Portman explained at the time. “And then they came to me with the fourth idea and said, you know, 'We have this idea, that was a storyline in some of the comics, where Jane becomes Lady Thor.' And I was like, this is very exciting. And also of course with Taika, and I love Tessa and Chris so much. So it's exciting to get to work with them again. And yeah, I'm very excited to wield the hammer.”Playing with oversized hammers (and thinking about the training involved in being able to convincingly wield them) isn’t the only thing that’s been keeping Portman busy while in quarantine. The actress, who hit up TIFF last year for her starring role in Lucy in the Sky, has also signed on to star in the upcoming HBO mini-seres We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves based on Karen Joy Fowler’s novel of the same name. She’s also been spearheading the movement to bring a National Women’s Soccer League team to Los Angeles.“I just want there to be every opportunity," Portman added in the chat with Williams. "You're fighting for different ways of being a female athlete. In my profession, there's different ways of being a female actress. We have the opposite thing, we're like expected to be frilly. [It’s important] that everyone has the most possibility of being their truest self."[video_embed id='2001455']BEFORE YOU GO: Dog hilariously tries to push cat out of family picture [/video_embed]