Elektra
French actress Elodie Yung brings Elektra Natchios to our screens for the first time in Netflix’s Marvel Universe – the character was previously portrayed by Jennifer Garner in the 2003 movie. Elektra is a mysterious character from Murdock’s past. Even the comic-book Elektra has two conflicting origin stories, but what we know for sure is that she’s beautiful, dangerous and a little bit (OK, a lot) mad following a childhood filled with death, suffering and abuse. Rest assured that with both The Punisher and Elektra cropping up early in season two to upset Daredevil’s finely balanced moral crusade, things are going to get interesting very soon.
What Elodie Yung says:
The TV version of Elektra is an adaptation of the comic book, so it won’t be exactly the same as the comic book. For example, we filmed in New York in the winter, and it’s quite cold in New York in the winter, so just maybe Elektra might wear a few more clothes than in the comic ... let’s rate female characters not in terms of attractiveness, but in terms of how interesting they are, or even how crazy they are. Elektra would definitely be number one or two on that scale. I think what we did was kept the essence of the comics. We kept the relationship between Matt and Elektra, the fact they fell in love when they were younger, and that emotionally charged past of the “first love” drives the story.
Elektra has travelled the world, she’s the daughter of a diplomat, she comes from money, and I wanted to keep all that. I tried to hide my French accent to keep that monied, global background. But she’s also a killer. She has a thing with violence and her morality was a question I really tried to work on. There’s a sense that she represses her feelings. In the comics when she loses her dad she doesn’t cry and she leaves her world, and her first love Matt, behind and goes to Europe. The writers wanted her to be a sociopath, and she definitely is, but that’s not all she is, she’s more than that. She has feelings, she loved once and there are different facets of her personality that come out through the series. It all comes back to that question of “what is it to be a hero?”
How does Elektra react when confronted by someone like The Punisher, who basically does the same job with different methods. How do you deal with people doing the same job but motivated by different things to Daredevil? I think the beauty of this series is that every single character has an effect on the others. Everything Elektra does will have an effect on Matt, but what Matt does will have an effect on her, too, and that’s the same for every character in the series. Each is an entity in themselves, but they’re interlinked and they evolve, just like in life. I think that’s a really strong quality of the show.
cnewbould@thenational.ae
