Jennifer Lawrence has a blunt answer for anyone hoping to see her turn blue again in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Looking back on her time as Mystique in a new video interview with Allure, the Oscar winner left little doubt about where she stands on a return.
Lawrence played Mystique in four X-Men films between 2011 and 2019, starting with X-Men: First Class and ending with Dark Phoenix, where her character was killed off. With Avengers: Doomsday now bringing the Fox-era mutants into the MCU — including Rebecca Romijn, the original Mystique — the question of a Lawrence return has come up again.
The comments came as Lawrence revisited her most iconic looks for Allure, a run that stretches from Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games to Mystique's blue skin. It was the Mystique transformation, she made clear, that tested her like nothing else in her career.
"My favorite part of playing Mystique was the stunts," Lawrence told Allure, via Variety. "It was so fun to train in that way and learn how to move. I had the same stunt double, Renee Moneymaker, who was Katniss. She is one of my best friends, so that was great. My least favorite part was most certainly the paint."
Asked whether she would ever put herself through that kind of heavy prosthetic work again, Lawrence did not hesitate. "Never say never, but absolutely f-cking not. You know how air brushing is very cold? And I am ticklish. I learned how little sleep I can operate on and what can happen to the human mind when you've actually reached your breaking point. And patience!"
The transformation behind those comments was no small ordeal, with Lawrence previously saying it took eight hours every time she had to turn blue. Later films cut the process down, but the airbrushed paint and prosthetics remained the part of the job she dreaded most.
Romijn's Mystique returns in Avengers: Doomsday, which opens in theaters on December 18, and Marvel Studios is developing its own X-Men movie with a new cast of mutants. On the evidence of this interview, Lawrence's Mystique will not be part of either chapter.
