Friday, June 11, 2021

SHE-HULK Casts Jameela Jamil as Titania


She-Hulk officially has her arch-enemy.

Variety has confirmed that the upcoming Disney+ series She-Hulk, based on the Marvel Comics superhero, has cast Jameela Jamil as Mary MacPherran, better known to Marvel fans as the supervillain Titania.

Jamil joins Tatiana Maslany as She-Hulk/Jennifer Walters, Mark Ruffalo as The Hulk/Bruce Banner, Tim Roth as The Abomination/Emil Blonsky, and RenĂ©e Elise Goldsberry as Amelia.

Kat Coiro will serve as director and executive producer on She-Hulk. She will direct the pilot and additional episodes of the series. Jessica Gao is the head writer and serves as executive producer.

Jamil, 35, is an English actress best known as Tahani Al-Jamil in the NBC series The Good Place.  She's also peformed a number of animated vocal roles for such series as Harley Quinn, DuckTales (2019), Rugrats (2021), American Dad!, and Animaniacs (2020).


Created in 1984 by Jim Shooter and Mike Zeck, Titania first appeared in Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #3 as Mary "Skeeter" MacPherran, who grew up scrawny and short-statured in a suburb of Denver, Colorado, inspiring a popular girl at school, Vanessa Ashwood, to nickname her "Skeeter" (a slang word for mosquito). As a high school senior, to help support her struggling family, Mary worked as a salesclerk alongside her only other friend, Marsha Rosenberg. Consistently bullied since childhood by the wealthy and cruel Vanessa and her friends, Mary grew resentful and bitter, and fantasized about gaining superpowers to become admired and exact retribution on her tormentors.

After the second Spider-Woman, Julia Carpenter, made one of her early appearances in their town, Marsha remarked that the new superheroine's reddish-blonde hair color matched Mary's. Mary then falsely confided to her friend that she was secretly Spider-Woman. Shortly afterward, Mary was invited to a fancy party at Vanessa's house, where she was surprised to find that her newfound popularity was due to Marsha spreading around the false Spider-Woman rumor. However, in the middle of the party, their section of Denver was torn from Earth and became part of the composite planet Battleworld, created by the Beyonder as a stage for a selected group of superheroes and supervillains to battle each other. When the real Spider-Woman arrived on the scene to save the guests from a collapsing structure, the now-enraged Vanessa and her guests turned on Mary and Marsha, chasing them into the forests of Battleworld.

Scared and exhausted, the two women were found by Doctor Doom, who was in need of further metahuman operatives to further his ambitions. Mary and Marsha both agreed to Doom's offer of power in exchange for serving in his army of supervillains. Using the highly advanced alien technologies found in Doombase, the villains' headquarters, powered by immense energies from the ferocious alien storm outside, Doom recreated both women, inducing high-level metahuman abilities of specific and particular design. While Rosenberg, now known as Volcana, received a fiery form composed of ionized plasma, MacPherran gained powers diametrically opposed to her previous self, becoming taller, more muscular, and buxom. Taking the codename Titania because of her strength like a Titan, MacPherran's physical changes came with changes to her personality, making her brash and seemingly confident.

Titania began to work for Doom, and was one of the villains ordered by Doom to attack the superheroes. She battled Thor and the X-Men, but her most impressive conquest was She-Hulk, getting the best of her during a gang beating, which began a long rivalry between the two. During their time together, Titania grew closer with fellow villain "Crusher" Creel, the Absorbing Man, and the two began a relationship. Once Owen Reece, the Molecule Man, managed to seal off the chunk of Denver, and began to navigate it back to Earth, Creel and MacPherran revealed that they were done with Doom and his war, and simply wanted to go home.

Once back on Earth, Titania and Absorbing Man continued to work as professional criminals by joining Baron Helmut Zemo's latest incarnation of the Masters of Evil before moving on to another supervillain group, the Frightful Four. She battled numerous superheroes along the way, but became unable to stay away from She-Hulk, which resulted in a series of defeats. Currently, Titania and the Absorbing Man serve as members of Gamma Flight, a group tasked with taking down She-Hulk's cousin, the Hulk.

Jamil will be the first actress to portray Titania in live-action, although the character has appeared in the animated series Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H. and Avengers Assemble, both voiced by Clare Grant.

She-Hulk is expected to be released on Disney+ sometime in 2022.

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