It’s been a few years since Dominique Thorne first got the call that Marvel wanted her to lead her own series — four, to be precise — but it’s not a phone conversation one quickly forgets.
“It was the middle of the pandemic, and I had just made my way back to my family and was literally just beginning to settle in there when I got the phone call from Marvel explaining that they wanted to bring this character [Ironheart] to life,” Thorne says. “They asked me if I was familiar with her, and I was, and said that they wanted to introduce her in this six-part Marvel series and have her introduced to the world before that in ‘Wakanda Forever,’” she continues. “I kept waiting for them to tell me about the audition and when they wanted me to send in my tape or something, but there was none of that.”
The 27-year-old can finally be seen in “Ironheart,” the Disney+ series that centers on her character Riri Williams, who audiences met in 2022’s “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” The show, which is executive-produced by Ryan Coogler, also features Anthony Ramos, Lyric Ross, Alden Ehrenreich, and Regan Aliyah, and follows Riri as she creates her own armored suit, similar to Iron Man’s.
Dominique Thorne
Lexie Moreland
Thorne is no stranger to the spotlight. Her past credits include Barry Jenkins’ “If Beale Street Can Talk,” Warner Brothers’ “Judas and the Black Messiah,” Sundance 2024 hit “Freaky Tales” and on Broadway, ”Jaja’s African Hair Braiding.”
In the early days of “Ironheart,” Thorne had been on the road promoting the show, but the magnitude of it all has only hit her now that she’s back home in Brooklyn.
“People are relating in such real-world ways that I would not have expected or just didn’t think about having been so far removed from the filming of it,” Thorne says. One of Riri’s journeys involves mourning the loss of her best friend, Natalie, a storyline that has struck a chord with early fans.
“This young woman came up to me and she was like, ‘I’m so sorry to do this, but I just have to tell you thank you for your work and your artistry. As someone who also lost their best friend as a teenager, I can’t even explain how it felt to watch Riri grow into herself and explore and have to figure out these questions exactly what I had to do,’” Thorne recalls. “It just zapped me into the reality of it, which you think about at the time, but it’s been about three years since we stopped filming so that was just an immediate pull back into how much these stories mean and why we do it.”
Dominique Thorne
Lexie Moreland
Thorne, who grew up in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, remembers going to see “The Lion King” on Broadway as a little kid and being enamored with what she saw onstage.
“I absolutely grew up in a Disney childhood home. My mom had truly every single Disney movie on VHS,” she says. “I think that absolutely left a mark.”
She started to focus on acting more seriously when it came time to start high school, attending the Professional Performing Arts School in Manhattan, before landing at Cornell University. When she got to college, though, she decided to instead study immigration legislation, inspired by her parents, who immigrated from Trinidad.
“That was something that had always been in the back of my mind, the way that immigration works in this country, being the child of immigrants and how that had affected me throughout my life,” she says.
Graduating as a human development major, she says her studies helped her deepen her ability to bring life to characters.
“I’m grateful for that little cross section of experiences because I for sure think it plays into my artistry, at least in terms of wanting to lean into the artistry of it all in order to lift up these experiences and shine a light on them,” she says.
Dominique Thorne
Lexie Moreland
She’s already seeing the payoff in way young people are connecting to her portrayal of Riri.
“When I think about the little kids, I [think about] my little brother and his obsession with his Spider-Man costume. I think about the kinship that those kids tend to develop with these characters and how much it means for them to see themselves represented in that way on screen, and how important and how cool it would be to have Riri Williams added into that mix for our young Black girls,” Thorne says. “And now here we are, and that’s kind of what’s happening, which is crazy.”
