Dominique Thorne Expands the Universe

In recent years, Dominique Thorne has embodied an array of roles showcasing the progression of young Black womanhood across several decades. She has gone from the disgruntled young sister of Stephan James’s wrongly imprisoned Fony in Barry Jenkins’s If Beale Street Could Talk to a member of the Black Panthers in Judas and the Black Messiah and, earlier this year, played one half of a female rap duo with Normani in Freaky Tales. Most recently, the 27-year-old Thorne had a star turn as a present-day genius in the new Marvel series Ironheart.

Thorne spent much of the summer on a packed promotional tour for her eponymous role in Ironheart, the superhero alter ego of Chicago-born tech wunderkind Riri Williams, who debuted in the Invincible Iron Man comics in 2016, created by writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Mike Deodato.

Reprising her role from 2022’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever—in the film, Riri is the mentee and sidekick of sorts of Letitia Wright’s Shuri, the new Black Panther following T’Challa’s death—Thorne is now playing the lead character as she builds her own technology inspired by Tony Stark, finding her place amongst the technology and magic after her stepfather’s death. “I think in Wakanda Forever, we were definitely seeing her in fight-or-flight mode,” Thorne says. “This time around, she’s pushed back home and there really is nowhere else to run, nowhere else to go.”

Leading this project, Thorne seized the opportunity to take on more of her own stunt work, building off of her experiences in the film. “I always appreciate those opportunities when there is the chance to lean in and do things for yourself, as long as it’s safe. I have no problem shifting things over to the stunt professionals, but I think it was really cool that I got to do a lot of that for myself.” Speaking of a particularly challenging scene, she continues, “I definitely had to do that—dive in, open the grate, hold the flashlight in your mouth. That was a pretty long time ago. I felt like all my free diving training from Wakanda really paid off in that scene.”

Alongside the stuntwork, Thorne underwent dialogue training to perfect her character’s Chicago accent. “I definitely, before Wakanda Forever or the series, went in a little Chicago rabbit hole,” she says. “I would listen to a lot of Queen Key. I was going through the dialogue archives to find young women from Chicago and going on YouTube and watching vlogs of Chicago YouTubers. I would walk around the city, hearing how they speak when they are at home to try and get that into my voice.” Another valuable resource was co-star Lyric Ross, who played Riri’s deceased best friend Natalie, who is revived as her suit’s artificial intelligence. “She’s just a really dope human being and also a young Black girl from Chicago. It was so fitting to have her in this project and really great for me to get to learn and work with her natural way of speaking. It helped me find how Riri can sound.”

Ironheart, at its core, is about Riri learning to face herself and her past, while slowly breaking down the walls of grief that she has built surrounding the deaths of her stepfather and her best friends. “I think a lot of that is her journey with grief and needing to confront the truth of how she feels about all of that life experience. That’s a lot for anyone to deal with, especially a young girl, a super genius individual, processing how all of that factors into the plans that she has for her life and the world around her,” Thorne says. “She hadn’t really taken a second to deal with or acknowledge the truth about how much it all impacted her. Instead, she shifted into the suit and put all her energy into the suit as if the suit would be the solution to the loss. I think we see her start to accept the fact that she has to go on a journey, not willingly. She kind of deals with it.”

While trying to track the emotional growth of her character, there is a clear tonal shift between the first and second halves of the season, shifting from crime drama to fantasy. “The first half is so important to really root us and ground us. It helps us understand where this story is going and taking place. The character of Chicago is so important for the overall feeling of the show and really for our overall understanding of who Riri is,” Thorne notes. “I think the last three episodes are focusing on the meat of this Ironheart journey. The last three episodes are where it all comes to a head.”

All of the conflict with the show’s antagonist, Parker Robbins or The Hood (played by Anthony Ramos), comes to a head in the season’s second half. In the finale, Riri defeats him and makes her own deal with the demon Mephisto to bring back Natalie, although it is clear that her conflicts, both with The Hood and her own past, are not resolved. “Riri goes through everything that she went through,” says Thorne, “and the weight of the grief is so great that she’s willing to overlook everything she just saw happen with Parker.”

As our conversation comes to a close, I ask Thorne what she would like to see moving forward, both for Riri and herself as an actress. Speaking of her character, she says, “I really want to understand what it looks like for Natalie to be back. I think it could be really cool to also get some answers about who is really a hero or not. I think it’d be really cool to continue to explore that balance.” She ponders what the series, which concludes Phase Five of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, means for the wider MCU as well. “This is the first time we’re seeing an iron suit mixed with magic. What does that look like? What is it? What is it capable of? And what does that combination do to the person inside of the suit? There’s so many questions I want to answer, so many worlds that we can keep exploring.”

As for herself, “I would love to work with Dev Patel,” she says. “I really, really would. I think he’s so incredible. He’s one of the first actors who made me tune into the work that’s happening in the film space. To see him shift into the role of director in Monkey Man was just spectacular. I got to see it at the Electric Cinema in London and it just blew my mind.” Then Thorne sets her horizons wider, saying she would love to do more theater but has been having fun with film, and is looking for original work and fun stories that haven’t been told yet.

In bringing to life such a courageous, complicated, talented young Black woman, Thorne is establishing her position as a role model herself. Whether for a genius Black woman in STEM or a Black woman with a burning desire to tell stories, Thorne is demonstrating her own unique superpower. It’s lovely to have both the actor and the character to do both.

Ironheart is now streaming on Disney+.