Thanos won’t be coming to Earth in search of the Infinity Stones alone in The Avengers: Infinity War as the Mad Titan is bringing his children, the Black Order, along for the ride.
The Black Order consists of Corvus Glaive, Proxima Midnight, Cull Obsidian and Ebony Maw, with the latter being played by Irish actor Tom Vaughan-Lawlor.
Ireland’s JOE.ie on YouTube caught up with Infinity War directors Joe and Anthony Russo to get the scoop on Vaughan-Lawlor playing the character.
“Because he’s an amazing actor,” Joe Russo explained why they cast Tom Vaughan-Lawlor as Ebony Maw. “We really were looking for actors to embody these characters, the children of Thanos called the Black Order. This character in particular, Ebony Maw, is like Thanos’ herald. He’s a little bit of his hype man. Thanos is sort of a culty character, and Ebony Maw, the character that Tom plays, is the one who builds up the cult. The character needed a sense of humor and to be a bit rye. He’s stealing all the scenes, so the character seems to be popping.”
“Like Josh Brolin with Thanos, Tom is playing a character that is largely created digitally with graphics and animated, but it is based very specifically on his performance,” Anthony Russo said. “It was a great process to work through with Tom because it’s almost like he is a puppeteer in the sense of learning how to control that character and learning how it moves and learning how his facial expressions translate to the character. It was a really involved process that Tom did wonderful with.”
The Russo’s also let it be known that Tom Vaughan-Lawlor got the role through an audition, but that they were already familiar with his work and were big fans.
“As soon as we saw the audition, we knew he was the right actor,” Anthony Russo said.
The Avengers: Infinity War opens April 27.
