“It is so exhausting to spend so much time sorting out every detail of what you are going to say in your own head,” she said. “I needed to know that I was okay with doing something stupid or simple and it wouldn’t blow up anything that sounds really absurd almost a year later.”
She treated vlogging like studying for a new project. “When I prepare for a role, it’s like I have a crush,” she said. “You want to think about her, you want to talk about her and everywhere you go it’s almost like getting magical signs because your whole world is that love.”
Part of her research has consisted of video calling successful YouTubers to find out their secrets. In this first announcement video, there are moments when Ms. Larson matches the emotional temperature of any vlogger.
“People love YouTubers to be vicarious, they love it, it’s weird,” says Kelly Stamps, a vlogger, in the video. “If you just go through my comments, people will just say, ‘I love to see you on camera myself. ‘Be relatable by simply being honest. “
On a Zoom call in April, Ms. Larson tied her damp hair and fastened the collar of her tartan Batsheva gown. She had just come out of the sauna and ice bath and recovered from a training session for “Captain Marvel 2”. Sometimes she logs her training with her trainer Jason Walsh. “I just wanted to feel like I was doing in the human realm what she was doing in this superhero realm,” she said. “And it helped me inform the character. There was no point just standing there and saying, “The CGI will take care of it.”
Over the years, Ms. Larson has learned how “plastic” her mind and body can be. “You can change for good and bad depending on what I do,” she said. She’s struggled mentally, playing characters like Joy Newsome in “Room” and Grace Howard in “Short Term 12,” but with Captain Marvel and Kit from “Unicorn Store,” making her directorial debut, she felt like she was a few To adopt character traits and to adopt them at home with her.