‘Ms. Marvel’: The Cast on Becoming “Best Friends” While Filming

The cast of Marvel Studios’ Ms. Marvel has intense FOMO — but not actually fear of missing out on anything, but rather missing each other. When all of them are asked, “when’s the last time you talked to your castmates?” the answer is unanimous: all the time.

Rish Shah mentions that he “literally calls Aramis [Knight] and Matt [Lintz] every other day” and actually does this interview at star Iman Vellani’s house (she’s in the other room); Knight explains he’s “in a group chat with Matt and we check in every day” (and recently went to the beach with Vellani — and he cooked her a steak!), and Yasmeen Fletcher adds that she and Vellani talked for two hours the other day, calls Laurel Marsden her “best friend,” and mentions that Lintz texted the two of them the other day asking “how are my queens doing?”

So yeah, it’s safe to say that the Ms. Marvel cast is incredibly close.

“It was such a wonderful and unique experience, because a lot of us are really new to this industry,” Shah, who plays the new boy in school Kamran, explains. “We were able to go on this journey together and support each other. From what I've heard, it's quite a rare thing. Even though I live halfway across the world from the rest of them, we're so in touch and so close.”

In terms of what they talk about every day, a lot of it is Ms. Marvel stuff, and also a lot of silly fun stuff just for them. “Is not even anything of substance. It's more or less like, ‘This is crazy, right?’” Lintz, who plays Kamala's best friend Bruno, explains with a laugh. “Everyone's like, yeah, I don't even know what to think right now. We have our cast group chat. Sometimes we'll send memes in there and funny things that fans are saying about whether it be the ‘Brian’ stuff or Bruno and Kamran, or any of that stuff — we've seen it. And it's great.”

“We definitely have been checking in on each other, because something with this much weight and gravity can be a little bit overwhelming,” Fletcher, who plays Kamala's other best friend Nakia, adds. “Every once in a while, we'll all just check in and be like, hey, how are you guys feeling, do you need anything?. But for the most part, we're all just, so, so, so excited. It kind of felt like I was playing dress up with my friends for six months and now everybody's seeing it, and they're able to actually enjoy the project.”

The cast lived together in Atlanta while filming, and according to Knight, who plays Kareem, the place he shared with Shah and Lintz became the go-to spot to hang out. “We would all just meet at our house and play games and listen to music. When I say that we got really close, you know, I'm not saying that as like a soundbite at all. We actually became really, really close and they’re some of my best friends.”

And as you do with close friends, the group relied on each other through long days of shooting. According to Shah, while filming he had a group chat with himself, Vellani, and Lintz — which he, with a laugh, mentions they called “the love triangle” — and one night after filming an intense scene the trio was so wired they couldn’t sleep.

“[Matt] sent a text at like 6:00 AM being like, I can't sleep. And I was like yeah, I can't sleep either. We were just like, should we go [get waffles]? We just stayed up and got waffles at 6:00 AM and then worked again the next day. It's like moments like that, which are probably my fondest memories.”

Lintz knows this was a one-in-a-million opportunity to be surrounded by all these people, and can’t get over “the amount of just sheer support and love for all of us and the hard work that the cast, the crew, production, everybody has put into this has been amazing. The fans of the Marvel universe are great. I never have met or talked to such passionate people. It's a blessing to be a part of it, to say the least.”

Fletcher might sum it up best, and doesn’t hesitate to call everyone on the show her “best friends.”

“As cliche as it sounds, we really have become a family to each other. And I know that a lot of casts say that, but we're just different.”

MS. MARVEL IS NOW STREAMING EXCLUSIVELY ON DISNEY+. 

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