In 2009, Emily Blunt was Marvel’s first choice for Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow, in Iron Man 2. When scheduling conflicts forced her to pass, the role went to Scarlett Johansson and helped launch one of the MCU’s defining characters. Blunt was later considered for Peggy Carter, another role that would become central to the MCU.
At the time, Blunt was emerging as one of Hollywood’s most sought-after young actors, following her breakout performance in The Devil Wears Prada.
She had signed an “optional picture deal” with 20th Century Fox (now 20th Century Studios, owned by Walt Disney Studios) when she starred in The Devil Wears Prada. Fox used that contract to put her in the Jack Black comedy Gulliver’s Travels. Because both movies were scheduled to film at the same time, she was contractually obligated to Gulliver’s Travels and had to pass on Marvel.
In a May 11, 2021 interview on the Howard Stern Show on SiriusXM, Blunt explained: “I was contracted to do Gulliver’s Travels. I didn’t want to do it. It was kind of a heartbreaker for me because I take such pride in the decisions that I make. They mean so much to me, the films that I do, so that was tough.” (source)
She told Stern that if the deal had stayed over her head, she could have been left out of projects like Young Victoria. So she decided to get the optional deal out of the way, and Gulliver’s Travels took priority over Iron Man 2.
She added, “It irked my heart for it to have happened in the first place, but I’ll always try to make the best of any situation, for sure.”
When Stern asked whether the superhero movies were beneath her, she pushed back: “I love Iron Man. I wanted to work with Robert Downey Jr. It would’ve been amazing. But I don’t know if superhero movies are for me. They are not up my alley. I don’t like them. I really don’t. It’s been exhausted. We are inundated. It’s not only all the movies, it’s the endless TV shows as well. It’s not to say that I’d never want to play one, it would just have to be something so cool, like a really cool character, and then I’d be interested.” (source)
After the Black Widow situation, Blunt was also in talks for Peggy Carter, the wartime love interest who anchors Captain America: The First Avenger and later headlined her own TV series. The role ultimately went to Hayley Atwell.
In a 2014 interview with Vulture, Blunt said the timing simply never lined up: “It was never the right time, really, and it just didn’t work out scheduling-wise with those two.” She added that discussing it felt unfair to the actresses who ultimately played the roles, Scarlett Johansson and Hayley Atwell. (source)
Over the years, Blunt has declined major superhero roles, often because of scheduling conflicts or a personal disinterest in the genre. She has said she is “never left with a feeling of regret” even when she turns something down, and she has joked about passing on the roles as a “badge of honor” on Josh Horowitz’s Happy, Sad, Confused podcast, though she has repeatedly said she would consider the right character and project. (source)
Despite passing on Marvel, Blunt has built a career around big-budget films. In the years after passing on Black Widow and Peggy Carter, she starred in Edge of Tomorrow, Sicario, The Girl on the Train, A Quiet Place, Jungle Cruise, and Oppenheimer.
Her film choices are famously selective. In her own words, “I know it in 20 pages if I love it. I am in or I am out after 20 pages.”
While Blunt never joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe, her story remains one of its most famous casting near-misses. Before Johansson and Atwell stepped into those iconic roles, both characters were nearly played by someone else, a reminder of how some of the franchise’s most defining casting decisions came down to timing, availability, and circumstance.
