Some dads and daughters might go for a brisk walk to bond. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” star Kathryn Newton discovered, the pace picks up considerably.
“Sixty percent of this movie was running!” says Newton, who plays Cassie Lang to Paul Rudd’s shrinking super-dad Scott. “I’m struggling. I’m much younger. And he never complained. He had to be dying.” At least she didn’t have to work on “my superhero run,” she adds. “Apparently it was just fine.”
Newton, 26, who’s appeared in “Lady Bird” and “Blockers,” is being introduced to a massive mainstream audience via “Quantumania” (in theaters now). Here are five things you need to know about Marvel’s newest face:
Kathryn Newton is a major Paul Rudd fan
Boasting youthful enthusiasm and her own supersuit, Cassie shares quite a few similarities with her dad. “He’s the Everyman,” Newton says. “Scott’s always looking out for the little guy and Cassie’s a lot like that. She wants to be like her dad, but she’ll never tell him. And she leads with her heart.”
But she didn’t have to study Rudd to play his kid. “I’ve seen everything he’s ever been in and looked up to him for my whole life. So it was really easy to create that father-daughter chemistry,” says Newton, who counts “I Love You, Man” and “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” as some of her favorite Rudd flicks.
Her role in ‘Supernatural’ ‘changed my life’
The one role that most prepared the actress for a Marvel adventure was in the long-running CW series. “That show changed my life,” says Newton, who played young monster hunter Claire Novak over three seasons – including a 2018 “Wayward Sisters” episode that was a backdoor pilot for a spinoff that wasn’t picked up. “I took a lot of risks because I didn’t think anyone would notice me. I didn’t think of it as like this huge deal.”
Joining the MCU was a big deal, though, and she came to the “Quantumania” set “scared out of my mind, wanted to be invisible, didn’t want to say the wrong thing and get fired,” Newton recalls. “So I had to get that out my head and I had to treat it like how I treated Claire Novak: have fun with it, take risks, try things out for the character and not hold back.”
The ‘Quantumania’ actress is a hit on the links
In addition to acting, Newton is also an accomplished golfer and has been playing she was 8. She and her “Ant-Man” co-star Bill Murray both attended the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am tournament two years ago and wanted to golf together while filming “Quantumania” in London last year. But “making a Marvel movie is actually really intense. I brought my clubs and they never came out of the travel bag,” Newton says. “It’s actually disgraceful that I didn’t practice at all.”
Newton loves that golf is “all on you,” she says. “You hit a great shot and you win that day, no one can take it from you. I love that you can be No. 1 today and you’re back to zero the next. It’s a lot like acting: Everyone has their moment.”
Horror has been one of Kathryn Newton’s go-to genres
The actress appreciates starring in scary movies because “you don’t need words. You can just do it with your eyes. And I’m really into characters that can make people feel sad, happy, scared, that change. An audience at a horror film, they really go on a roller-coaster ride,” says Newton, who appeared in 2012’s “Paranormal Activity 4” and played opposite Vince Vaughn in the 2020 body-swap slasher “Freaky.”
Her next film is “Lisa Frankenstein,” a horror comedy starring Newton as an unpopular teen girl who reanimates a Victorian corpse (played by Cole Sprouse) and then attempts to make him the dude of her dreams. “It’s very camp,” says Newton, and her role is “over-the-top insane.”
But the ‘Ant-Man 3’ star is ready for a ‘Young Avengers’ teaming
In the Marvel comic books, Cassie Lang is in a superhero squad with America Chavez and Kate Bishop, and while Newton has met her fellow MCU counterparts – Xochitl Gomez and Hailee Steinfeld, respectively – “we haven’t really talked,” she says. “We’ve got to have a dinner and a girls night or something.”
Though Newton is excited for her next Marvel opportunity, “nothing will ever be as fun as this was,” she says of “Quantumania.” “I got to use my physicality (and) my comedy improv. I got to work with Paul Rudd and wear a cool costume. I’m telling you, I don’t know how it gets better.”
