A League of Their Own

Emma Corrin, breakout star of The Crown, is Marvel’s newest supervillain. But they are so much more than Deadpool’s latest adversary. They are utterly, completely themselves.

- By Ella King. Photographs by Sam Rock

Emma Corrin is scraping butter over a hot cross bun. It's Monday afternoon outside a London bakery. "The most transgressive human desire is autonomy," Corrin says levelly, their blue eyes clear and unblinking. "The ability to do what you want, have sex with who you want, dress how you want, say what you want."

It's a statement that makes me wonder how Corrin's own desire for autonomy plays into their artistry and chimeric talent for embodying everything from British princesses to amateur sleuths. Now, they're taking on Cassandra Nova in Marvel's Deadpool & Wolverine, the evil twin sister of Professor X and the latest supervillain to face Ryan Reynolds's Deadpool and Hugh Jackman's Wolverine.

"It felt like working with a skin-covered Swiss Army knife," says Reynolds, conjuring a disturbing image I recall as I watch Corrin slice through a bun. "Emma brought a Gene Wilder energy to Deadpool & Wolverine. Mischief, danger, unpredictability-from their first scene onward, we understand the villain enough to know why she's motivated to oppose our heroes. And that's because Emma is so fucking excellent at humanizing even the most chaotic lines. The only thing we love more than hating a villain is loving one. And we love Emma's Cassandra Nova from the jump."