Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania picks up after Avengers: Endgame, with Scott Lang seen as a hero for his part in defeating Thanos and saving the universe. Now, his only focus is making up for lost time with his now teenage daughter Cassie. However, Scott and his family are thrust into a new adventure when they are sucked into the Quantum Realm by Cassie's experiment gone wrong.
A number of Janet Van Dyne's secrets are revealed throughout the course of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, including a dangerous new threat known as Kang the Conqueror. While in the Quantum Realm, Scott and Cassie also meet a group of freedom fighters displaced by Kang. One member of this group, Veb, is played by an actor familiar with the Ant-Man franchise: David Dastmalchian.
Screen Rant spoke with Dastmalchian about playing Veb in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. He shared the conversation he had with Peyton Reed when he learned his original Ant-Man character, Kurt, wouldn't be returning and how Reed pitched Veb. Dastmalchian also revealed other Marvel and DC characters he wants to play and how he could see Veb appear in What If...?
David Dastmalcian on Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
Screen Rant: Congratulations on Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. I was looking for you the whole time, like, "Yo, where's Kurt?" And then here we are with Veb. How did you end up getting this new role?
David Dastmalcian: I mean, you're a fan. You get it. It is a big deal for me as a fan to even consider the possibility of a different character within the MCU, let alone within the same franchise. That to me was a call that I'll never forget, when Peyton said, "I'm sorry that there's just no space for [Kurt.] We're trying to tell this story in the Quantum Realm. There isn't space for what's going on back on Earth. We couldn't do that. But what do you think about this?"
And he sends me this character because he goes, "Jeff Loveness [and I] were writing this, and I said, 'This is David. This feels like David.'" And it's just a huge honor. It's a huge gift. It's something I'll never take for granted. And it's something that when I was presented with the opportunity to either go and just maybe bring the voice to life in a recording booth at some point after they finished the film, or to be on set, Peyton wanted me to be able to be there on set.
And I said, "I'll move heaven and earth." I was in the midst of a crazy schedule. I said, "I'm coming." I got there. I'd never put on a mocap suit before. You look like one of those speeds skaters. It's the tightest thing. There's nothing gracious about it or good-looking. I mean it is just like you are in a tight gray onesie, basically. And what it does for you is it breaks your ego, your imagination is all you've got, and you just have to create. And I was surrounded by the perfect people to do that with.
That's incredible. I'm so happy for you because I know you're such a big fan. Talk to me about your approach to Veb, because he's still a very comedic character, but it's a completely different style of comedy.
David Dastmalchian: Totally different. And the wonderful thing with a gift of a role like Veb is that Veb is driven by this unquenchable curiosity and this unquenchable love of others and friendship. And it brings a lot of heart and also sadness when you think about the reality that the other beings that Veb was originally in community with who were all destroyed or had been wiped out by Kang. And now Veb has found this new community with all these beings that don't look like Veb, they don't move like Veb, they don't even have bodies like Veb. They have weird things like holes or other parts of the anatomy that are fascinating to Veb. And yet they've taken Veb in. And Veb has the purpose.
It was really beautiful for me to go, "Veb has a really important purpose in this community." Veb is the way that all these different people in this melting pot of freedom fighters can communicate with one another. You got to drink a little bit of Veb if you want to talk to everybody else that's now part of your family. So on a macro level, I believe that's true for us as a global family. And I sometimes feel like our language barriers are one of the illusions that make us think we're separate from one another. And on a macro level, the differences in our appearances, our bodies, how we look, how we move, sometimes make us think we're different from one another, but we're not. And Veb instantly knows.
Veb's instincts about Scott and Cassie are that these are good people, they're heroes, they're going to help us. And in a hero's journey, characters like Veb are so important. So I took it very seriously even though we're being silly. Even though there's a lot of jokes, I definitely wanted to be there physically bringing this to life in a way that demonstrated the importance of Veb's role in the journey.
And it was such a great, heartfelt character. Is there anything else that you wanted to explore more with Veb and the Freedom Fighters in the Quantum Realm? Or is there anything that may have gotten switched or changed during the initial scripting process?
David Dastmalchian: There's so much I would love to do. We basically shot everything that Veb was scripted to do, and we actually added a couple of things after because Peyton and Jeff Loveness, the writer, and Stephen Broussard, the producer, and Paul Rudd, they all seemed to really love what Veb was bringing out in the other characters. So we added some goofy fun stuff with Veb, and we added a line where Veb's running into battle, and he yells, "Revolution." I love that. That was new.
I think for me personally, as David, as a fan of comic books ranging from, Micronauts to Fantastic Four. Other comic spaces that play in the weirder realms. The West Coast Avengers were always a big special place for me. Those kinds of characters, and then animation stuff like SpongeBob I felt like has a place in my heart for this that there's an important role for Veb in any other stories that Veb could be a part of helping tell because as the interpreter, as the kind of C3PO, except with his goo, could be really a good member of a team. And I think Veb is that light in the tunnel when you feel like giving up that says, "We can do this. And what comes out of your hole?"
You've played tons of superhero characters in different projects. Two from Marvel, with Kurt and Veb, And two from DC with Abra Kadabra in the Arrowverse and Polka-Dot Man in James Gunn's The Suicide Squad.
David Dastmalchian: I was going to say, I guess he's not a named character, because I was thinking the Joker's Thug in The Dark Night doesn't count.
Technically, three. That's right. Now that James Gunn is helming the DCU, and it's going to be somewhat of a reboot, is there any character in the DCU now that you'd like to play?
David Dastmalchian: Oh, man. After doing this incredible role through motion capture, I feel like there's no limit to the number of characters that I would love to see or bring to life in both the DC and the Marvel Universe ranging from the Scarecrow to the Mad Hatter all the way to Krypto, there's so many. I always felt [DC] had the best villains. I always felt that way. And I always felt that Marvel had the best heroes.
On the Marvel side of things, Morbius was definitely always one of my favorites. Moon Knight was one of my favorites. On the DC side of things, it was definitely Scarecrow, Solomon Grundy; maybe through motion capture. Although they would probably want to hire somebody a little more big than me, I'd be willing to go to the gym and get as big as I could possibly get for Grundy.
Heroes that I still want to see explored in the DCU. There's so many, and James is the perfect person to be the captain of that ship. It's just the most exciting time for us DC fans to see what he's doing. He's a legend, he's a genius, and he's a beautiful human being. I hope that at some point there's room for Firestorm and Martian Man Hunter. There's a lot that I'd love to see in more cinematic or television stories.
I can't get David Dastmalchian as Scarecrow out of my head. You reprised your role as Kurt in Zombies What If...?, last year in 2001. Any chance we can see you in season two of What If...? either as Kurt or Veb?
David Dastmalchian: That is a question for Mr. Brad Winderbaum. I'm going to go ahead and use this article as an opportunity to ring Brad's doorbell and say, "Hello. Who else do we need exploring with their holes?"
Because Veb is very curious, and he's got a song. Did you know Veb has a song? It's on YouTube right now. If you listen to the Quantumania soundtrack, I believe it's Track 22. It's the last track of the whole album. But Veb could maybe become a performer in a nightclub somewhere. Who knows?
It's a perfect character to fit into The Fantastic Four if we want to go that route later on down the line. What did you want to bring to Veb that wasn't on the page?
David Dastmalchian: The thing I wanted to bring Veb that I didn't initially see in the script was the sorrow, the sadness that lives within Veb's heart and spirit at losing so many of the family and other creatures that Veb has loved over time at the hands of Kang. I felt like it was important for me when we were shooting some of the sequences, even though I'm not giving any dialogue, even though I'm not even going to look like David. I was there in a motion capture suit, but I was doing my Veb walk and just looking up at some of my scene partners, especially like let's say Katy O'Brien, brilliant, amazing Katy O'Brien doing Jentorra's monologue about when the Conqueror came and what the Conqueror took from us.
And looking back to Scott and Cassie and just trying to convey with David's eyes, knowing that eventually it's going to look different, but that we need to send them that energy that says, "We're hurting. We need you. We need a hero right now." I felt like that was really important, and it's one of the million reasons why I'm so grateful that I was allowed to be there on set, interacting with my scene partners and helping to bring that stuff to life.
About Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
After defeating Thanos, Scott is ready to make up for the time he missed as a father, but before he has the chance, he, Hop Van Dyne, Janet Van Dyne, Hank Pym, and Cassie Lang are pulled into the mysterious Quantum Realm. Now, the family will need to navigate the Quantum Relam and its inhabitants, including a new threat, Kang the Conqueror, if they have any chance of returning home.
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