‘Ms. Marvel’ Star Iman Vellani on Playing Kamala Khan: “She Felt So Much Like Me”

In some ways, Iman Vellani was Kamala Khan even before she officially became Kamala Khan.

After school, the Pakistan-born Canadian teenager would go across the street to her local comic book store, where her obsession with the Invincible Iron Man series one day led her to pick up a copy of a different title, one with a Pakistani-American teenage girl on the cover.

“I’m like, ‘OK, who’s this brown girl now?’ ” she recalls. Vellani’s the type of die-hard who references exact issue dates, and her first Ms. Marvel was No. 19, the start of the “Mecca” storyline: “It just blew my mind that a superhero comic was showcasing Eid [the Muslim festival marking the end of Ramadan].”

After that, she didn’t miss an issue of the series and even cosplayed as the Avengers-loving teen turned superhero one Halloween. “She was my total comfort character,” Vellani says. “She felt so much like me, and a lot of that comes from not just her background and ethnicity but because she’s such a fan of the Marvel universe, too,” explains Vellani, 19, who plays the character in the Disney+ series Ms. Marvel, out June 8.

Though nobody in her family is in showbiz — her father is an accountant, her mother is a nurse practitioner and her brother an engineer — they’ve always been supportive of Vellani’s artistic pursuits, including acting and running lights for her high school theater program and serving on the Toronto International Film Festival’s Next Wave youth programming committee. “I think my parents, being immigrants, wanted us to try new things,” says Vellani, who moved from Pakistan to Canada when she was one. “They would never be the ones to be like, ‘Just focus on your studies,’ because you can do that anywhere. They brought their kids to a different country so they could have different opportunities.”

Such opportunities included a Ms. Marvel casting call, which Vellani’s aunt received through a WhatsApp group chat and forwarded to her comics-loving niece.

“I knew exactly which comic books they pulled the scenes from [for the audition sides],” says Vellani, who was nearly too intimidated to send in her self-tape, procrastinating until 3 a.m. the night it was due. “My 10-year-old self is going to hate me if I don’t do it,” she told herself. A week later, Vellani and her dad were in Marvel Studios’ L.A. offices for an audition. “I was fully nerding out in front of [co-president] Louis D’Esposito and [casting head] Sarah Finn,” she says. “I wanted to take full advantage of being there because I didn’t know if it was going to happen again.”

But it did — Vellani received the news she was cast on the last day of her senior year — leading to an even bigger fangirl moment. “My favorite people on the planet are Robert Downey Jr., Billy Joel and Kevin Feige,” she says. “The day [Feige] came to set, I fully froze. He was trying to talk to me, and I stared at him until he left, and then I went back to my trailer and cried the hardest I’ve ever cried before. That was the most cathartic feeling ever.”

Since then, Vellani has rubbed elbows with plenty of Avengers, including her co-stars in next year’s The Marvels. “Brie [Larson]’s held my hand throughout this process, Teyonah [Parris] has been so wonderful,” says Vellani. She’s also gotten guidance from Guardians of the Galaxy star Chris Pratt: “He made himself so available for any help I would need in the future, so I shot him an email asking about press and stuff and he sent me this juggernaut of an email with so much advice and what’s gotten him through this.”

Vellani’s life has already taken some marvelous twists, and she knows she has plenty of time to stay open to whatever comes next. Her original plan was to major in integrated media at Ontario College of Art & Design University in Toronto, and she still harbors an appreciation for being behind the camera. “I got interested in cinematography when I started watching Ingmar Bergman movies and a lot of Agnès Varda,” she explains. “But acting’s working out pretty well so far, so I’ll see where this takes me. I want to try a bunch of things, because I’m still young and I don’t really know what I’m good at. I want to be involved in work I’m proud of and has a good message, and that Hollywood hasn’t really seen before.”

A version of this story first appeared in the June 1 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.