Fantastic Four actor Kate Mara says she had a ‘horrible experience’ on the Marvel superhero film, regrets not standing up for herself

Kata Mara, who played Sue Storm in the ill-fated Fantastic Four film, has said that she had a ‘horrible experience’ working on it, and regrets not speaking up for herself on set.

Fantastic Four actor Kate Mara has expanded on her recent comments about having had a ‘horrible experience’ working on the film. The rebooted Marvel superhero movie was a critical and commercial disaster.

Kate Mara in a still from Fantastic Four.

The film, released in 2015, was mired in controversy after the reported ‘erratic’ behaviour of its director, Josh Trank. The director made a return this year, with the Tom Hardy-starrer Capone, after having spent several years in ‘director jail’.

“I had a horrible experience on Fantastic Four,” Mara told Emmy magazine. “I’ve never talked about it before. I married one of my co-stars, so I don’t regret doing that movie at all . But do I wish I had responded differently to certain things? Yes, definitely.” She suggested that the poor experience might be linked to the fact that she’s a woman.

“The fact of the matter is that my two horrendous experiences with directors were male directors,” she said. “Have I not gotten along with a female director? Absolutely. And was it not the greatest work experience? Sure. But there was never a time that I felt, ‘This is happening because I’m a woman.’ Where with the male directors, it 100 percent was only happening with me; it was a power dynamic thing. And on both of my bad experiences, the movies were 95% men and I was the only woman in the movie.”

In a subsequent interview to Collider, she expanded on her original comments, and said, “I think that the thing that I always go back to on that one is that I think I should have followed my instincts more. Like when my gut was telling me, ‘You probably shouldn’t let that slide, what that person just said,’ or if you’re feeling a certain way about what an energy is like and how that is affecting your performance. You’re being paid to do a certain thing and if something is in the way of that, you have the right to speak up and say, ‘I’m actually not able to do what I am here to do because of X, Y and Z.’”

She said that she was hesitant about ‘speaking up’ for herself because it ‘was such a big movie’. She added, “I don’t regret doing it at all, but do regret not having stood up for myself. I regret that for sure.”

The film also starred Miles Teller, Michael B Jordan, Jamie Bell and Toby Kebbell. It is said to have lost the studio $100 million. Director Trank disowned the film in a tweet, which he later deleted.

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