Kristen Wiig joked she feared the “Warner Bros police would come knocking on my door” while discussing the secrecy surrounding her Wonder Woman 1984 casting.
The actress stars in the superhero film as villain Barbara Minerva alongside Gal Gadot in the title role.
Wiig, known for her work on comedy Bridesmaids, revealed Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins got in touch with her agent – but the casting was so cloak-and-dagger she was not told what the film was.
Speaking to Gadot for Harper’s Bazaar UK, she said: “It was mysterious because I got a call from my agent who said, ‘Patty Jenkins wants to talk to you, but they won’t say what it is – they won’t say what the film or the role is’. I was like, ‘Is it Wonder Woman?’ I had to sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) to even talk to Patty.”
Wiig, 47, then flew to the UK to audition for the role and joked about how studio Warner Bros may have reacted had she spilled the beans.
She added: “I had to fly to London to do a camera test and read for the part, but I couldn’t tell anyone, and I was so paranoid about it.
“I went by the rules and was like, ‘I’m going to London for a thing and I can’t talk about it and I’ll be back in a few days’. I thought the Warner Bros police would come knocking on my door.”
Wonder Woman 1984 is a sequel to 2017’s Wonder Woman, which also starred Gadot and Chris Pine. Wiig admitted she was nervous about joining such a beloved franchise.
She said: “I loved the first one so much and it was just a dream for me to pack up my stuff and go to London for eight months and know that I was working on this movie, it was such a life-career dream for me.
“I was also nervous about it all too because it’s such a big world that I was stepping into and you guys had already established such a great character and tone, the stories of Wonder Woman. I just thought, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m going to be in this movie and there are so many fans’. It was so nerve-wracking.”