Elizabeth Olsen On What She Learned From ‘Sitcom Bootcamp’ To Prep For ‘WandaVision’

By Brent Furdyk.

Elizabeth Olsen spoke to IndieWire in a lengthy interview about her recent Disney+ series “WandaVision”.

“You can’t control people’s experiences and you never really know why something catches,” Olsen said of how the series — the first Marvel TV offering for Disney+ — has been received.

Ahead of filming, Olsen explained, the cast and crew participated in a two-week “sitcom bootcamp” in which the cast could shape the storyline.

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“It was remarkable with us getting together as a company,” Olsen said. “We went in knowing what were the things we maybe wanted to figure out and storylines that needed a bit more meat on the bones.”

Olsen also did some research on sitcoms of the 1950s and ’60s, and how they represented the culture of those eras.

“Just thinking about the actual history of what’s going on in the United States when these sitcoms are coming on-air and how the ’50s really pushed this family nucleus on us aggressively as a culture and we are still reacting from that effect,” said Olsen. “Thinking about the Vietnam War while ‘The Brady Bunch’ is on TV… [that] not showing up on television.”

RELATED: Elizabeth Olsen Says She Wanted To Make It On Her Own, Without Help From Sisters Mary-Kate And Ashley Olsen

The experience of re-enacting a sitcom, Olsen explained, reminded her of doing live theatre. “My comfort space, as a kid, was on stage,” Olsen said. “And going to college you forget, as an actor, how to use your whole body.”

Added Olsen: “Everything’s physical. It just felt so good to exercise those muscles again… It kind of shifted me to a different gear which I appreciated.”

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