Helen Mirren Leaked Rachel Zegler's Shazam 2 Character Before DC Was Ready
"Shazam! Fury of the Gods" – the sequel to 2019's "Shazam!" — has just been released in theaters, and audiences have been introduced to "West Side Story" star Rachel Zegler's character. Zegler plays a girl named Anne, who Freddy Freeman (Jack Dylan Grazer) has a crush on, and she is then revealed to be the goddess Anthea. It turns out to be not so much of a reveal because one of Zegler's co-stars, Helen Mirren, spilled the secret sooner than DC was ready for.
Zegler explained in an interview with Seventeen that she and the rest of the cast were supposed to be keeping her character's identity a secret so audiences could be surprised while watching the film. That plan didn't exactly pan out as Mirren spoiled the secret during an interview with Associated Press.
"I did a podcast and they were like, 'So we heard you're playing a goddess,'" Zegler said to Seventeen, "And I was like, 'How did you know that?' Helen Mirren said it." Despite this, Zegler managed to take the spoiler in stride.
Zegler explained that her struggle to keep the secret was ruined by Mirren
During the interview with Seventeen, Rachel Zegler and her co-stars were asked who in the cast is most likely to leak a spoiler. Zegler blurted out Helen Mirren's name, with her co-stars agreeing.
"Helen Mirren spoiled my character," Zegler said. "It was supposed to be a secret." Mirren's slip-up caused Zegler a bit of frustration as she had been working hard not to spoil it herself. "I was doing such a good job at keeping it a secret, and I'm not a good secret keeper," Zegler said. "I am basically the Tom Holland of all of that stuff."
Lo and behold, she found out during a podcast interview that Mirren had already revealed her character's goddess status, but she rolled with the punches.
"If anyone is going to spoil it," Zegler said, "it might as well be [Helen Mirren]." The slip-up in question happened in November of 2021 while Mirren was speaking to Associated Press.
"I'm a member of three goddesses," Mirren said. "Lucy Liu as Kalypso and the third goddess played by Rachel Zegler, who will be a huge star in a very short space of time." The legendary actor then went on to discuss how much she loved working with Liu and Zegler. "It's so infrequent that you get to spend a whole of a movie with two other women. So often you're the only woman in the cast. Here we were a trio, and that was great."