Marvel Wanted Saoirse Ronan For A Key MCU Role - But She Turned It Down

At this point, it seems as if every single actor on the planet has joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe or is set to appear in one of its projects eventually. Everyone from Angela Bassett to Mark Ruffalo to Sir Anthony Hopkins to Matt Damon has popped up in the MCU at one time or another, but some performers have avoided showing up as a superhero or in a small cameo (as is the case with, say, Damon). Apparently, that include Saoirse Ronan.

The four-time Academy Award nominee has been acting since she was quite young, appearing in a small handful of projects before scoring her first Oscar nod for her heartbreaking supporting role in Joe Wright's "Atonement." One thing she hasn't done is show up in the MCU yet — and according to Justin Kroll, a senior reporter at Deadline, it's not going to happen.

Speaking to Matthew Belloni on The Ringer podcast The Town, Belloni and Kroll crafted a power ranking of younger Hollywood stars, at which point Kroll dropped a bombshell about Ronan and the MCU. "The Saoirse thing, I've heard stuff she's passed on. She passed on Florence [Pugh]'s role in 'Black Widow,' the sister," Kroll said. "Marvel has not been her cup of tea, and she was not interested."

Ultimately, as we all know, Florence Pugh portrayed "the sister" in 2021's "Black Widow" — more specifically, Yelena Belova, assassin and adopted sister to Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson). The first (and only) standalone film for Johansson's Black Widow delved into her family dynamic for the first time, also introducing Rachel Weisz and David Harbour as Natasha and Yelena's makeshift parents Melina Vostokoff and Alexei Shostakov. Pugh is fantastic in the role, which is to be expected — the young British actress tends to elevate basically any project in which she appears — but one has to wonder what Saoirse Ronan might have been like in the part as well.

The two performers are equally talented but distinctively different actors, which audiences know because the two worked together before either of them were publicly mentioned in the same breath as the "Black Widow" movie. Though Pugh was announced as a "Black Widow" lead in March 2019, she and Ronan had already finished filming Greta Gerwig's adaptation of "Little Women" — which arrived in December of that same year. Pugh played the tempestuous, vain Amy March, while Ronan portrayed the headstrong, brilliant Jo March. The fact that Ronan passed on a role that eventually went to her on-screen sister is pretty interesting, and in the end, Pugh was a perfect pick for Yelena.

With or without the MCU, Saoirse Ronan's career is doing just fine. After "Little Women," Ronan showed up in a small role in Wes Anderson's 2021 film "The French Dispatch," working with the director again after her supporting turn in "The Grand Budapest Hotel" and reuniting with yet another "Little Women" star, Timothée Chalamet. She also led a crime caper alongside Sam Rockwell in 2022 with "See How They Run," and in 2023, she starred with Paul Mescal in the science fiction drama "Foe." (She and Chalamet were also reportedly set to appear in Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" in small cameos, but sadly, neither actor could make it work with their schedules.)

When all is said and done, perhaps it's best that Ronan never joined the MCU, as other actors have spoken out about the limitations it can place on them as artists. Elizabeth Olsen and Dave Bautista have been candid about being constrained by their MCU roles, with Olsen even saying she had to pass on projects like Yorgos Lanthimos' "The Lobster" because of her commitments to Marvel Studios. Ronan remains a free agent, and seeing as she's moving into a producing role — she's set to produce her upcoming 2024 film "The Outrun" — it's probably better that she didn't sign on to play Yelena Belova.