Tatiana Maslany Responds to ‘She-Hulk’ Backlash: “I Focus on the Positive”

Tatiana Maslany joined the MCU in 2022 with a standalone Disney+ series centered on Bruce Banner’s cousin and superhero in her own right, Jennifer Walters, aka She-Hulk. While fans were initially excited about the premise, the execution quickly became chaotic, and to this day, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law remains one of the most controversial entries in the MCU.

The show faced criticism on every front—its story, dialogue, CGI, character portrayals, and especially its budget.

In a recent interview, Maslany shared what drew her to She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, how she handled fan expectations, and why she chose to focus on the positives. Maslany had never been part of a huge franchise before, so joining the MCU felt overwhelming. The size of the commitment made her hesitate at first.

“That size of thing was always something that I avoided even thinking of doing because it felt so big, and it felt so enormous to make a decision like that,” she said.

What convinced her? It was the showrunner, Jessica Gao.

“The script and my meeting with Jessica Gao before the audition was like, ‘She’s so funny. She’s so interesting. I’m so curious about her take on this character. I feel like she and I can build something really interesting, and we have a similar sense of humor.’ That just became more and more apparent as I was working on the project, that she was like the thing.”

Reading the pilot episode also helped her decide.

“Reading the pilot, I was like, ‘Oh, this is so funny.’ It was actually a different pilot than the order that the series came out, but I was like, ‘This is so funny, and so not a superhero thing. It feels like I can find my way into this.’”

Maslany was especially interested in how Jennifer’s transformation into She-Hulk affected how people treated her.

“I also found interest in the idea of, and we sort of got into this in the series, inhabiting a body that makes people talk to you differently, respect you differently, treat you differently, objectify you. What does that do inside to how you feel about yourself? Where does that instill confidence? Where does that detract from how you know yourself to be when you are performing what people expect?”

Playing a superhero also meant stepping into something bigger than herself.

“If I’m taking on this part, I’m sort of embodying that in the world, too. I’m stepping into something that’s bigger than me, that I don’t know that I am that. I don’t know that I can fill that out. People are going to be looking at me and saying things and deciding things.”

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law notably faced backlash online. Maslany admitted that dealing with negative comments was tough, but she appreciated that Jessica Gao had predicted this reaction and wrote it into the show.

“I don’t know because to this day, my comments on my Instagram back 40 weeks ago, they like to go in all over there. For me, what’s so exciting is that Jessica Gao knew that was going to happen,” Maslany explained.

“She wrote it into the show. There’s something in She-Hulk that is looking out, and she’s aware of the camera. She’s aware of somebody watching her. There’s something about the inherent quality to that character that is self-aware and that understands her place within the MCU or within a series or a TV show or a scene or whatever, just like Jennifer Walters is aware of her place within the legal system and how she’s struggling as a woman to be taken seriously or to be respected.”

Despite the negativity, Maslany chooses to focus on the fans who truly love the show.

“Again, there are so many more interesting things that I can look to than vitriolic fan response where people don’t like it or just want to be mean and use you as a dumping ground for their worst thoughts. But again, like you were saying, there are people who I meet at conventions who are like, ‘I love that show,’ or, ‘I’ve been reading She-Hulk since I was a kid, and the story of the show is exactly what she was like.’ You just remember that stuff and then you work through it. It’s a constant thing.”

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