Jessica Alba got real about her least favorite scene to shoot as Sue Storm in the 2005 film Fantastic Four 20 years later — a “humiliating” one where her character reappeared completely naked over a bridge.
“I thought that was awful,” she said while giving an expansive talk on her career at the Red Sea Film Festival. “It was very humiliating in real life. I grew up with a pretty conservative family, and I am a pretty modest person. I dreaded that scene for weeks. I have a lot of whiplash from those days.”
That said, Alba went on to say that she “loved” playing the character and breaking gender stereotypes in superhero media with the role. “She was a woman I looked up to,” she explained. “She was very maternal and very kind, but also not a pushover; she spoke her mind. She had a great moral compass. No matter who you are, you can look up to her. Oftentimes, the women in these stories need to be saved by a guy or the villain, the problem in the story. This was back then. It’s different now.”
Interestingly enough, Alba hasn’t had a chance to catch her successor, Vanessa Kirby, try her hand at Sue Storm in The Fantastic Four: First Steps. “I usually watch those movies with my kids, and if Sonic was out, my son wants to watch it 85 times in a row. When it comes to movies that are for the family, my kids dominate what we watch for sure,” she revealed during the talk. “But I have to convince him because we have to see it! I love Marvel, and they’re so fun.”
Alba took on the role of Sue Storm in the 2005 entry and the 2007 sequel film Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. After her, Kate Mara played the role in the 2015 reboot film. Last year, Alba said she would “jump at the chance” to reprise her Fantastic Four role, but confirmed Marvel Studios has yet to approach her about a return.
Marvel rebooted The Fantastic Four with Vanessa Kirby taking on the role of Sue Storm alongside Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic, Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm/The Thing, and Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm/Human Torch.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
