Why Maria Bakalova was the first actor James Gunn recruited for his DC universe

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Creature Commandos season 1, episode 7, "A Very Funny Monster."

James Gunn’s DC universe is growing rapidly. Creature Commandos wraps up its first season this week, and this summer will bring Superman, the first movie in the new DC continuity overseen by Gunn and producer Peter Safran. As was apparent in the first trailer, Superman will bring a plethora of superheroes and actors into the fray beyond David Corenswet’s titular Man of Steel. But the very first actor Gunn talked to about taking part in his DC projects was Maria Bakalova, who voices Princess Ilana of Pokolistan in Creature Commandos.

“Maria was the first person we ever offered a role in the DCU [to],” Gunn told Entertainment Weekly ahead of Creature Commandos’ launch. “She was the first person that we cast because I wrote the role for her, and we had to find out early because her native language is Bulgarian, so we needed to write all of the other characters to fit her language and we had to cast her right away.”

Related: Indira Varma talks Creature Commandos finale, what's next for the Bride (exclusive)

Bakalova had previously worked with Gunn on Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy films, where she voiced Cosmo the Space Dog.

“I remember I was on a plane, shortly after we wrapped Guardians Vol. 3, and I was just feeling bummed that it was the last installment of this franchise and I would probably never be able to work with these people again, especially James,” Bakalova tells EW. “But I got a message where he told me, I’m building this character for you, a femme fatale princess for this Creature Commandos show we’ll be doing at the DC Universe.’ I was like what, really? I was looking forward to reading the script, and it’s such a well-written script. It’s so layered with so much suspense that by the end you don’t really know which side you’re supposed to be on, and I loved that.”

Bakalova continues, “I was so thrilled to work with him again and play something I hadn’t played before, a woman who knows how to use her femininity to manipulate people. She makes you wonder, what is her actual goal? Do you trust her, or not? Is she fragile, or is she very strong? It’s a very complex character.”

The season finale of Creature Commandos finally gives answers to those questions, and reveals exactly why Princess Ilana was so important to the show.

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Although she initially seemed like a damsel in distress that the team had to save from the sorceress Circe (Anya Chalotra), Ilana revealed that she was the villain of Creature Commandos all along. She was manipulating the team of monsters into doing her dirty work, so that she could enact her master plan of wiping out superheroes and conquering the world.

“Up until the last 10 minutes of the show, you are not for sure convinced that she really wants to dominate the world,” Bakalova says. “But she does! She wants control over everybody and to be the most powerful person in charge. It's interesting how you can manipulate people by making yourself look more innocent, more fragile, and maybe even more stupid. She wants to be underestimated. She wants to be seen as somebody who needs other people’s help, but she’s actually not that silly. She’s very smart. It’s a cool character.”

While the main story focused on Princess Ilana and the team’s work in Pokolistan, Creature Commandos also showed the backstory of each team member and how they became a “monster.” In almost every case, they were misunderstood, abused, or transformed without their consent. But Princess Ilana never got such flashbacks, because she wasn’t abused or oppressed by society. She was a perfectly privileged golden princess, and that made her more evil than the Bride of Frankenstein (Indira Varma) or Nina Mazursky (Zoe Chao), the innocent fish-woman who ended up getting killed by the princess.

Related: James Gunn explains his philosophy for killing off Creature Commandos characters: 'It's a f---ing waste'

“It’s such a great commentary on what it means to be a monster,” Bakalova says of Creature Commandos. “These characters are considered monsters, they are treated poorly, they are forbidden from the world and are locked in the heaviest prison. But James shows how we so often perceive people as one thing without knowing their story. It’s the same with Ilana. We see her as this innocent young lady who needs to be protected, but then she's probably the biggest monster of them all.”

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly