Zazie Beetz of ‘Deadpool 2’ explains how nobody can pronounce her name.
Robert Deutsch, USAToday
Zazie Beetz, 26, poses for a portrait in New York. The “Atlanta” star is poised for a breakout co-starring with Ryan Reynolds and Josh Brolin in “Deadpool 2.”(Photo: Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY)
NEW YORK — After Deadpool 2, more people will know the name Zazie Beetz. But first, they’ll want to learn how to say it.
“Zay-zee is pretty offensive to me,” jokes Beetz, whose name is pronounced Zah-see. “I just get nicknames very quickly: Za, Zaza, Z, Zoboomafoo. It runs the gamut.”
In Deadpool 2 (in theaters Friday), the actress plays the sardonic Domino, an always-lucky hired gun who’s recruited by Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) for his X-Force team to save a flame-throwing teen mutant (Julian Dennison) from breaking bad.
Looking unflappably cool as Domino dodges whizzing bullets and snaps the limbs of her adversaries, Beetz is the movie’s “captivating standout,” says USA TODAY movie critic Brian Truitt, while others on Twitter have called for the character to get her own spinoff film. (To which co-writer Paul Wernick responds, “I don’t see why not.”)
Zazie Beetz stars as the wildly lucky mutant Domino in “Deadpool 2.” The character is white in the comic books, but Beetz embraced the “wonderful opportunity to showcase my (natural) hair texture.” (Photo: JOE LEDERER)
Beetz, 26, broke out in 2016 on FX’s Emmy-winning show Atlanta as Van, a young mother and on-and-off girlfriend of cash-strapped rap manager Earn (Donald Glover). With a short résumé of mostly dramatic roles in low-budget projects until now, “I never really pictured (a superhero movie) would be my trajectory,” she says. “I was nervous, because you sign onto a franchise and you’re contracted with them to continue on with the story, and you don’t really know what you’re signing up for. But I liked the idea of introducing the live-action version of a character,” particularly one as strong and no-nonsense as Domino, who’s depicted as having chalk-white skin and straight, chopped hair in comic books.
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Reynolds and producers encouraged Beetz to wear her hair natural for the role, which is a “wonderful opportunity to showcase my hair texture on a mainstream platform,” says the actress, who is half-black. “Black Panther got there first, but this is one of the (more prominent) depictions of just hair and a ‘fro.”
Beetz trained for two months prior to shooting in Vancouver last summer, devoting four hours a day to cardio, weight training and mixed martial arts. Things only got more intense once she slipped into Domino’s tight, “wildly impractical” leather bodysuit: She fainted during one particularly elaborate fight sequence with a truck convoy, and even got burned by a stray shell casing during a shootout, which left a scar on her chest.
Zazie Beetz plays new mutant Domino in irreverent superhero movie ‘Deadpool 2.’
Robert Deutsch, USAToday
That fierce level of commitment combined with charisma is what drew co-writer Rhett Reese to her immediately.
“She can really keep up with Ryan, which is not an easy task. She’s with him step by step,” Reese says. “She’s so cool and inspirational, in the sense that she (embodies) such a fun and awesome character. Hopefully we’ll be seeing cosplay of Domino at Comic-Con for a long time to come.”
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That Beetz has already been recognized on the street for Deadpool 2 is surreal to the actress, who was born in Berlin but has lived in New York most of her life. In middle school, her idea of a “superhero movie” was Charlie’s Angels.
“I was a musical Disney girl growing up,” Beetz says. “I liked Mulan, Pocahontas, The Sound of Music, Singin’ in the Rain — I was much more in that direction than the comic-book universe.”
Zazie Beetz wowed in floral Valentino on the ‘Deadpool 2’ red carpet. (Photo: MICHAEL LOCCISANO/GETTY IMAGES)
She graduated from New York’s LaGuardia High School (from the movie Fame) with a concentration in theater, before exploring other creative outlets such as painting and making clothes, and getting a bachelor’s degree in French from Skidmore College. “But acting ended up being the most consistent thing that I stuck with,” she says.
Although a third season of Atlanta hasn’t been officially announced, Beetz has plenty more films on her plate in the meantime. Among them: independent drama Sollers Point (also in theaters Friday); Chance the Rapper horror flick Slice (expected later this year); sci-fi movie Pale Blue Dot with Natalie Portman; and a still-untitled mystery with Armie Hammer and Dakota Johnson.
As her star continues to rise, “my boyfriend (actor David Rysdahl) and I have been talking about what’s going to change and trying to wrap our heads around it,” Beetz says. “People have been asking me if I can still take the subway and I can now, it’s not an issue. But I’m a little bit mourning that loss right now, walking around like, ‘This could be my last day not having to wear sunglasses or something.’ “
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