Hailee Steinfeld Made Her Own Edits To Gwen Stacy In Across The Spider-Verse
How does an actor create a sense of ownership over their character when cast in a voice-acting role for an animated superhero movie? Though it'd be misleading to make it seem like any kind of acting is "easy," live-action performances certainly have a more straightforward approach to making a character their own. Audiences are able to see every choice the performers make on the biggest screens available, from specific line readings to how they wear the cape and cowl to the most minute facial expressions during any given shot. So when it came to finding the same sort of rhythm with Gwen Stacy in "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse," Hailee Steinfeld had her work cut out for her.
In a new profile with The Washington Post, filmmakers and "Spider-Verse" co-writers Phil Lord and Chris Miller were asked about the process of working with a talent as young as Steinfeld and how she managed to further dive into her character on this second go-around. According to the pair, that mostly shined through after one notable early screening of the then-incomplete film. After sitting down and scrutinizing her own voice work, Steinfeld came away with a very detailed list of edits and improvements she wanted to make to her own performance. As Miller put it:
"She came out of it going, 'Okay, here's 12 lines that I think I can do better.' It was really inspiring to be like, 'Fantastic. Let's do it. Let's get to the booth again.'"
Not just any actor would've been so eager to take the initiative and pour that much energy into fine-tuning a voice-acting role. Luckily, directors Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson inherited a perfect casting choice from the original movie, which helped elevate the sequel to an even higher level.
Finding her voice
"Across the Spider-Verse" comes packed with an unbelievably stacked cast of actors, from the returning trio of Hailee Steinfeld as Spider-Woman, Shameik Moore as Miles Morales, and Jake Johnson as Peter B. Parker to new additions like Oscar Isaac, Issa Rae, Daniel Kaluuya, Karan Soni, Jason Schwartzman, and many more. But of them all, Phil Lord and Chris Miller seem to have come away most impressed by what they observed from Steinfeld's work. Later in the interview, Lord chimed in with his own thoughts on watching Steinfeld do her thing throughout production on "Across the Spider-Verse" over several months:
"What's fun about working with Hailee as a filmmaking partner is for someone so young, she's so experienced. But she also has a sense of authorial ownership over the role and her career. You really see the emergence of someone who's taking command of her work."
At only 26 years old, Steinfeld has already become a true multi-hyphenate, balancing the demands of acting with her ongoing (and highly successful) popstar career. She famously burst onto the scene at the age of 13 after her highly-acclaimed appearance in the Coen brothers' "True Grit" remake back in 2010, eventually following up on that award-worthy performance with another standout role in 2016's "The Edge of Seventeen," leading the "Transformers" spin-off "Bumblebee," and even joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Kate Bishop in "Hawkeye." That's a lot to have under one's belt before even turning 30, but clearly all that experience came in handy when she added animated voice work to her impressive résumé with the "Spider-Verse" movies.
Fans eager to soak in Steinfeld's latest performance as Gwen can do so by checking out "Across the Spider-Verse," which is now playing in theaters.