Alexandra Shipp shares a familiar tale when probed about her early days as a starry-eyed performer with her sights set on Hollywood superstardom. The fast-rising actress/singer scored a manager and an agent at just 14, and she would spend the next several years splitting her time between Los Angeles and her family home in Phoenix, Arizona. “It’s a cutthroat, dog eat dog world,” she says.

Shipp has transformed into Aaliyah in the late singer’s biopic, starred in last year’s cult phenomenon Straight Outta Compton, and of course there’s X-Men: Apocalypse, the latest installment in the blockbuster franchise in which she plays Storm, one of Marvel’s most beloved superheroes first made popular in film by Halle Berry.

X-Men Apocalypse releases in the UK on May 18th and we’ve got 3 of the stars for our X-men special collection. Kicking off with Alexandra Shipp. Enjoy the preview and watch this space…

 

 

What can you reveal about Storm’s origin story in the film and how that might have shaped her worldview at large?

You find Storm just a few years after her parents have passed and she’s living on the streets of Cairo. She’s pickpocketing for cash to buy food, stealing clothes, and camping out in abandoned buildings. It’s sad to see someone so great being reduced to so little and I think that’s what attracts Apocalypse to her. For Storm, that’s all she’s ever known. All she knows is that, if you have powers, you can make money off of that. You can make money by protecting people or by taking it from them. So when Apocalypse tells her, “How are you living in the gutter when you’re a goddess? You should live your potential. Come with me,” Storm realizes, “You’re right! Don’t mind if I do, Apocalypse! Papi!” [Laughs] I hope they do a full origin movie with Storm and T’Challa. That would be so dope. That’s all I can think about.

 

How long did it take you to settle into Storm, your Storm?

It took a couple of months. What I wanted to convey with Storm is that she can kill you with a look, and if you know me, you know there’s no killing anyone with my look. [Laughs] I’m the biggest nerd! I’m way too silly to be that badass. It was hours and hours in front of a mirror, which is no surprise for an actress. It was about trying to find the right head tilt, the right gaze and the right thing, that if I shoot you a look, you will feel my power. It took around 3 months to find her body.

With ­X-Men, you’re entering a universe that has a longstanding comic book fan base and a movie fan base, not to mention people who look up to you for taking on such an iconic black female superhero. Is that a lot to take in?

I do feel pressure because I want to give girls an accurate representation of a powerful black woman. Halle Berry did such a great job that I felt the fear of living up to her Storm. But I also felt the fear of living up to my own nerdy expectations. I’m a fan of X-Men. I grew up on the cartoons. I grew up reading the comics. I wanted to do that right. I wasn’t sleeping, just going over my Arabic and my Kenyan accent all the time. I wanted to make sure that girls who see this movie, young girls of any race or color, are excited by Storm and the way I portrayed her.

 

Words: Kee Chang

 

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