The Defenders: Sigourney Weaver Says She’s Not A Villain

Sigourney Weaver’s villainous role has been kept tightly under wraps ever since her character was announced at New York Comic Con last fall. Except for now we know there’s a twist in store: Weaver doesn’t consider her character a villain.

I’m just as confused as you, but apparently, Weaver would rather identify as an ‘adversary’ to The Defenders, and for good reason . Showrunner Marco Ramirez, who defines Weaver’s character as a ‘survivor,’ elaborates during an interview with Entertainment Weekly. He says Weaver would rather protect her vision of the world than destroy it.

“In her career, she’s come up against a lot of different people — armies, mercenaries, devoted religious fanatics and all kinds of different groups — who have tried to take her down, but she’s never met four people who are seemingly just interested in taking care of this one little part of New York. I think she’s actually really charmed by it, and weirdly, because they’re unlike anybody she’s ever faced off against before, it’s intimidating to her.”

“Above all else, she cares about living. She’s about self-preservation, and self-preservation at all costs… She has the long game in mind, and she isn’t thinking about this chess game, she’s thinking about six chess games in the future. As such, I think she’s seen a lot of beauty in humanity and in the world, but there are certain things that to her are expendable, and that’s a really dangerous worldview.”

While Ramirez has his own reason for considering Weaver’s character a ‘survivor’ instead of a pure villain, Weaver has her own view of why she should be labeled as an ‘adversary.’ Her reasoning goes beyond just her character. She wants to be sure The Defenders avoids the trope of female villains being labeled as cruel and heartless.

“With my work in general, I try to avoid terms like ‘ice queen’ that are often thrown at women who aren’t completely sympathetic. I encouraged [them] to not think in those terms, because I find them completely meaningless, and to help me understand who I was from a really un-cliché-ed point of view. I think we succeeded in that.”

The only solid fact we know about Weaver’s role is that she’s the head of an ancient organization, and based on that simple bit of information, we have our theories. Check them out here and stay tuned for our interviews with The Defenders cast at San Diego Comic Con.