How Kathryn Newton Became Ant-Man's Cassie Lang

Working with Jonathan was really surprising

because a lot of the times,

I didn't realize that I wasn't talking to Jonathan.

He's method.

So when I saw him in the morning,

he was the sweetest person I've ever seen.

But I would look at him and be like, How you doing today?

And he would just look at me.

And laugh.

And I'd be like, Paul, what did I do?

And he's like, I think he's in character.

And then he'd finish the day and be super nice,

and I'd be like, Do you remember when you did that thing?

And he's like, No.

I'm like, well you said this.

And he's like, I did?

Hi, I'm Kathryn Newton,

and this is how I became Cassie Lang.

[epic music]

You know it's a good phone call or a really bad phone call

when like nine of your agents are on the phone.

And they said, You have a general meeting tomorrow

with Marvel director Peyton Reed for a project.

And they didn't really say what it was,

but I know Peyton Reed directed Ant-Man.

So I knew it was Ant-Man!

And I took the meeting in my closet

because it was during Covid,

and like my dogs bark really loud.

He just told me about a new character, a young hero.

I was like, Wow, this is gonna be amazing.

Like whoever gets this is gonna be forever changed.

I was so excited to just, you know, watch it as a fan.

[epic music]

I was really excited to explore somebody

who doesn't understand what it means to be a hero.

At the heart of it,

she's a girl trying to reconnect with her dad

and show him who she is.

I loved exploring that

and the idea of all the guilt that she feels.

She's trying to make a difference,

but she kind of messes up.

She just leads with her heart,

and that really gets her in trouble.

I did a lot of research on Cassie Lang in the comics,

and there's so many different versions of her,

and I watched the movies.

I watched the original Ant-Man movies

to figure out the Cassie Lang

that the fans have already fallen in love with

because we thought about her legacy every day.

This is carrying on the legacy of Cassie Lang,

and who is she gonna be now?

Cassie?

Dad?

I was like, I wanna get ripped for this role.

I wanna train for a year.

And I only had like five months of training, if that.

But I really wanted to give it all I had.

And our director, Peyton Reed, was like,

No, Cassie doesn't need to be a superhero.

She just is a regular girl.

So what we did was we learned how to like fall,

how to take a punch, like things like that

that I actually would use on the day.

If you watch the movie, you see Cassie Lang tripping

and falling and trying to punch and trying to win,

and she just can't do it.

Like she hasn't figured out how to jump and tap yet.

You okay?

[Cassie] Yes.

Look, momentum, right?

Jump, tap, right? One move, jump, tap.

I know how to do it, Dad.

And if you watch, you see her tripping.

That was just me tripping.

Like I wanted Cassie to be like that.

But that was also Kathryn

just trying to figure out how to be a Marvel superhero too

and not wanna let anybody down and getting ahead of herself.

And truthfully, you just gotta have stamina.

On a movie like this,

it's about being able to run around and not get hurt.

So about six months before filming, I had a 3D body scan,

and you're like in a sports bra, booty shorts,

and they do your whole body,

and then like six months later,

six months, it takes them to make this suit.

I had a fitting, and I walked in,

and I had no idea what it was gonna look like,

and I saw it hanging, and it was purple.

And purple's my favorite color.

[laughs] I was just so happy.

I took a secret selfie that nobody knows about.

I put it on, and it fit like a glove,

and I looked at myself, and I was like,

Yeah, this is gonna work.

I'm gonna fool everybody because I'm not a superhero.

But the suit really helps you play the part.

As soon as I put the suit on, Kathryn wasn't there anymore.

You know, I put the suit on,

and people look at you different.

These suits really feel like a super suit.

I feel like if you punched me, I wouldn't feel it.

I feel like if I punch you, it's gonna hurt a lot more.

And I think her and I were very similar.

These people are engineers.

It's not just like a costume.

It's not like flexible.

It's made to my body.

So I'm a golfer,

and my right shoulder is lower than my left,

and I didn't know that.

And the designers were like,

We have to put in another pad and engineer this

so that way it doesn't take the pressure off.

'Cause I was like, Why does it hurt so bad?

And then they fixed it, and it never hurt again.

They see everything.

It's really cool.

It helped my posture.

It taught me that I really slouch a lot.

I kind of miss my suit.

[epic music]

I was so nervous to meet Paul.

I was so nervous to just join the cast

of icons like Michelle Pfeiffer

and Evangeline Lily and Michael Douglas.

And I was just like, Don't get fired.

Don't get fired. Also be cool.

Be really, really cool and like just be quiet,

and they won't notice or see you coming.

I didn't have to be like that at all

because that's why they're so successful.

They made me feel good.

They made me feel confident.

And working with Paul was easy,

easy as you could ever imagine.

He's just like what you see, he's so funny.

And the best thing about working with him

was he put me at ease.

He made me feel like I had something.

He believed in me, and that's really all you need,

is one person to believe in you,

and it really changes your life.

And now it's something I learned.

He's like, Do one take for the director,

one take for the writer, one take for whoever,

but always make sure you do one take for you.

And it just changed my perspective.

I'm like, Oh, yeah, what about me?

What about what I wanted to try?

The first day on set actually was the most generic day

that we could have had.

It was on a sound stage.

It was a closed set that was, you know, a fake dining room,

and we were all at a table having pizza,

and we did everyone's coverage first, right?

Because I'm the little new guy.

And then we got around to me,

and that was just right after Paul had told me

not to hold back and to try stuff.

So I was like, Well, I got the green light from Paul.

I might as well.

I just tried a bunch of improv stuff,

and then they ended up getting other shots

of other people again 'cause of some of the ad libs.

So I was like, Huh, it really is a collaboration.

And I think what that does is it just creates a chemistry.

It just creates a banter.

So even if I'm breaking and laughing

and feel like I'm wasting everybody's time on set,

Paul was like, Don't feel bad about it

because it creates an energy,

and the audience can feel that.

They can feel that we're having a good time

'cause it's real.

So we really were making each other laugh.

The next couple days were like on this volume thing

where you see the quantum realm.

It's like a green screen but not.

It's a bunch of little lights,

and I can see like this monster coming at me,

and I have this idea of what he looks like.

It feels like you're on stage at Coachella.

Like I think it's the closest I ever felt

to like a rockstar.

That's when it gets tough though.

Let me tell you what, that's when it gets tough.

'Cause I'll be there with Paul.

There's some guy dressed in a gray suit

like a football player with a bunch of pads

to make him look like an alien.

And then he's like gargling,

and he's making these weird gargling noises,

and I'm supposed to be terrified,

but I'm feeling weird.

Paul looks like that,

which just makes me laugh because we look so silly.

And that's when you gotta be a good actor

because they need you to commit.

And I had to really try to just bite my cheeks

and stop from smiling and be terrified.

Didn't work 'cause Paul would look at me and be like,

Whatever you do, don't laugh.

And then I just couldn't. I'd just get the giggles.

In fact, that scene in particular

is when we first get to the quantum realm.

I couldn't stop laughing,

and then Paul couldn't stop laughing.

It's the only scene that we had to re-shoot and separately.

We had to do it separately

because we kept making each other laugh.

So we start around, picked up around 4:45.

You know, drive over to Pinewood, do training for an hour.

On a really good intense day,

I would get there early and train with our trainer,

or just stretch, do something.

And it was so important to do because that super suit,

if you're not warmed up, you gotta stretch.

You have to get your muscles really ready.

And then I would eat in my trailer,

like scrambled eggs with American cheese,

bacon toast, avocado, a smoothie.

Start hair and makeup, put my wig on.

That took like two hours. Ridiculous.

So then by then, I'm hungry again.

And all day long, I ate apples and peanut butter.

It was actually a joke.

By middle of the filming,

they just gave me the box or the tub of almond butter.

I switched to almond butter about halfway through.

I know, crazy.

Almond butter, like it was like huge.

And I just ate it with a spoon.

I'm clearly very food oriented.

But I had to say, like I ate all day on this movie

'cause I was working out all day long.

You don't even realize it.

And then I had to go to the bathroom a lot,

and you know that's difficult.

That suit, it's not fun.

But one thing that really helped me prepare

was Jonathan Majors.

He is an incredible actor. He's so well thought out.

And he said this,

that with Marvel there's an encyclopedia of knowledge.

So we can look at every comic

and see so much of our characters and who they are.

You're an Avenger.

Have I killed you before?

And then for me, it all started on the page.

This script is a new Cassie.

You've never seen her like this before.

But he told me a lot about the history of Iron Lad

and like Cassie Lang,

and he's like, we didn't have that much,

you know, in the scenes.

But he was like, I'm thinking about all this.

We're not talking about it.

That's not what this is about.

But as an actor

to have that kind of in the back of your mind,

it just adds a depth.

Working with actors like Jonathan Majors and Paul Rudd,

it's like a crash course in how to be in a Marvel movie.

And they're so different.

You know, Paul Rudd's a little more like me.

Like we kind of jumped in

and just went and let go, you know?

And Jonathan, I don't know,

but for me it felt like he had a lot of knowledge

and a lot of research that he already did.

So when we all step on set,

it just creates like an easy set to be on.

There's no rehearsal needed.

Everyone's ready to go.

[Kang screaming]

The most challenging scene to film

that is in my head right now is the one of Paul and I

when I'm saying goodbye.

It was the first time I really worked with Paul one-on-one,

and we were like, All right,

we're just gonna look at each other in the eyes

and start crying.

It was weird.

We didn't really know our characters that well.

We didn't know where they were going,

what our storyline was going to be.

And, of course, it was great because Paul's great,

and he was so good and just made me cry.

We had a guy dressed as a MODOK.

So he would hold a green face that looked like MODOK.

But usually if I was on camera, there was nothing there

'cause the eye line had to be so tight.

So that whole thing of like being a superhero

and like punching him and all that,

like, yeah, just me and tape.

So becoming like stature Cassie was a really big deal.

Especially on that day,

we all knew that this was the hero moment.

I still don't think she's like a real superhero yet.

I think she's on her way.

But that moment was a glimpse of someone taking a risk,

having to become a hero for herself.

So we practiced lots of things.

I did one where I got really, really big and like screamed,

and then I did one where I got really big

and screamed really, really low, like, whoa.

It was weird. Didn't work.

Obviously didn't make it in the movie.

And then I did one that I really liked

where I felt like I had just won the Super Bowl,

like doing a dance like a football player.

Yeah, that didn't make it in the movie either.

But this is my point.

You just have to try stuff.

You don't know what's gonna land.

I feel like most of being small was CGI.

I think when I'm small, I have my helmet on.

So I don't think that I ever had to be small physically.

But a lot of like my fight scenes,

even if I have the helmet on, that was really me.

The helmet's all CGI.

And there's this new rule

where the only time I have to wear my helmet

is when I'm shrinking and growing.

Every other time, I don't have to have it,

which is really cool 'cause I want you to see me, you know?

I think the moment

when I really felt like my imagination changed

was when we were in the quantum realm,

and we met all the people, all these characters,

like Veb, the thing with no holes.

Working with the actors,

it was just like another day on set.

There was a real person playing Veb,

and he walked around like this.

David Dastmalchian, he's amazing.

And then when I saw that,

that was my favorite part of the movie

'cause I loved all the characters.

It felt like I was in Wizard of Oz

and like meeting the lions and the tigers and the bears.

It was magic to see it in theaters 'cause it was just cool.

The imagination, the CGI is incredible.

The houses flying, I love all that.

I think that's why I love Marvel movies.

They really take you somewhere else,

and it's a little bit of a fairytale to me.

[calm music]

It was kind of my goal.

I told myself, if I didn't get it by the time I was 25,

to be in a Marvel movie, I should just quit,

or, you know, go back to college.

So it really was kind of surreal.

But that's the thing is that it always gets better.

And if you didn't get the opportunity

that you always dreamt of, it's going to be better.

Like Marvel took a long time.

It didn't just happen overnight.

Doesn't just happen like boom, now you're in a Marvel movie.

It's kind of like you gotta be ready.

So I feel like my dream came true

when I knew that I could handle it,

and I knew that I could serve it.

I knew that I could kill this role. I knew it.

I can do it physically.

I knew I could do it with Paul Rudd like helping me.

I mean, I don't know if I ever get to work with him again.

So this might be it. Nothing will ever top it. [laughs]