Nerd Up!

Idris Elba (The Wire, The Office, The Losers) answered a few of questions regarding his role as The Bifröst Bridge Gaurdian, Heimdall in the upcoming Thor movie.

How is your Roque different from the comic book?

Elba: Roque in the comic book is white and I’m black.

I didn’t even know that.

Elba: Yeah, I didn’t know either but it didn’t matter. There was no reflection on that in the screenplay but I definitely used Roque in the comic book as my skeleton to build my Roque. So I stayed as true as I could to him. The scar was the only physical attribute that I took from the comic book and applied to myself. Other than that, I just used his personality, his persona in the comic book to make my Roque.

Is this a recent development that you can make a change like that?

Elba: Yeah, casting now is taking definitely a more open-eyed approach to it. I was cast in Thor and I’m cast as a Nordic god. If you know anything about the Nords, they don’t look like me but there you go. I think that’s a sign of the times for the future. I think we will see multi-level casting. I think we will see that and I think that’s good.

With Thor do you look at the comic books or Nordic mythology?

Elba: I looked at the comic books actually because Heimdall, he’s a very central character and I wanted to reflect him as he is in the comic books.

What do you look like in Thor?

Elba: [Laughs] I look like how he’s designed, man. I can’t say but he looks phenomenal.

Do you get to do any cool action in that?

Elba: Yeah, I do, yeah. I can’t say, brother, but it’s really, really cool.

Source: Latino Review