Very allergic to Reggie the cat which plays her character's pet, the 'Room' actress says that doing crazy stunts was easier than filming with the animal.
- Mar 6, 2019
AceShowbiz - While Goose is Captain Marvel's feline ally in the comics and the movie, it turns out in real life the superhero isn't that close with the cat. Brie Larson, who plays the titular character in Marvel's upcoming movie, reveals that filming with Reggie the cat, which plays her character's pet, was so hard because she's allergic to the cat.
"It was like the joke on set because I could do really crazy things stunt-wise, but the cat was a big obstacle for me," the Oscar-winning actress tells USA Today. "It's weird how you can train and get your body to do insane things but allergies are kind of a hard stop. That's where your body's like, 'That's it.' "
Larson actually takes allergy medicine "every day no matter what, because I'm just, like, allergic to the planet for some reason." But her allergy to the cat made the filmmakers "very conscientious" about scenes where the actress and Reggie shared the same space, according to co-director Anna Boden.
They would use a stuffed cat as a stand-in for Goose if Larson's character Carol didn't have to touch the cat. Whereas when Larson did have to come in contact, "we'd have somebody there to wipe her hands afterward and to make sure that the cat wasn't hanging around on set when it didn't need to be," Boden shares.
Luckily, it was Samuel L. Jackson who had to interact more with the cat. Boden says the movie is "really more about a love story between Goose and Nick Fury than it is a love story between her and Goose. Sam had to do a lot more of the getting really into the cat love there."
Still, Larson wishes her relationship with the cat wasn't like that. "I wish that it wasn't the case!" she says of her cat allergy. "Cats are probably super-cool. I've just developed a sort of 'you stay over there, I'll be over here' relationship, because it makes me break out in hives."
Jackson recently admitted that he's not a cat person, but he admired Reggie as a professional cat. "No, I am not a cat person. But I'm also not a dog, bird or a fish person, either. I don't engage pets," he said in a recent press junket for the movie.
"You know, Reggie is like most animals that people bring to set that have been trained to do this, that, or the other - he's snack-oriented," he explained. "You give him something to eat, he shows up. You give him something to eat, you talk softly and nice to him, give him something to eat again. They love you. You know, so, it works out. And... there were actually four cats, but Reggie did the majority of the heavy lifting most of the time."
"Captain Marvel" is set to bow in U.S. theaters on March 8.
