Did Kenneth Branagh get you to prepare any specific way?
Natalie Portman: "I was thinking more about when we had rehearsal where they used chairs. Very high tech rehearsal for a jillion dollar budget, but they used chairs to build different spaces, like these kinds of chairs in an empty room. Then we would have to do the scenes and act around the chairs as if they were like buildings or cars. We had to sit in a car and pretend we were driving."

Kat Dennings: "I did this a lot to pretend, to try to look cool. And I didn’t have a license at that time either so it was acting."

Natalie Portman: "She drove a really, really difficult car."

Kat Dennings: "But I never got to actually drive it on the road, remember? And I was so good at it. What was it called? A Pinsgaller."

They didn’t give you Thor comics to read?

Natalie Portman: "Well, we definitely got lots of Thor comics and Ken gave me a lot of books on female scientists and their experiences, which is really interesting."

People don’t think of the female characters in Thor. What did you have to make your characters interesting?

Natalie Portman: "Well, Ken and I talked a lot before we started about how to make Jane like a realistic scientist on screen, not just make her someone like the Denise Richards in Bond with the glasses and so she’s a scientist. But we talked about how real scientists are kind of like artists. They’re able to imagine things that aren’t there and to give her the sense that she’s sort of frazzled and she’s always thinking in abstractions and that there’s a poetry to it.

So that’s where we started it from, and also that she has some family things that echo Thor’s familial situation so that there’s that sort of a bond between them. Obviously, they have a common quest because he’s trying to get back home and her whole interest of study is these connections between dimensions. Darcy..."

Kat Dennings: "Is useless."

Natalie Portman: "No."

Kat Dennings: "Darcy makes food for Jane and mixes her Kaschi in the morning and basically she’s a new invention. She’s not in the comics. She just sort of hopes to be like Jane one day."

Natalie Portman: "She’s a hesitant student."

What’s the biggest challenge of stepping into something with such a fan base?

Natalie Portman: "Well, one of the interesting things about the comic books is that they were written over several decades with several different writers and artists so there’s very different stories, very different tones, very different artwork, very different places the characters go and depictions of the characters. The challenge, more for the writers than for us even, but for the writers and for Ken as the director, is finding one tone, choosing which of the stories to tell because obviously all of these are sagas that have gone on for decades and whether to include certain characters or add others, which details to keep and which details to spare."

Are there differences between your character in the movie and the comic books?

Natalie Portman: "Oh yeah, very. For example, Jane in the comic books is a nurse and now she’s an astrophysics doctoral candidate. Things have been updated. Women can be scientists in different ways now."

How much of the comic books did you go back and read?

Kat Dennings: "I’ve read a lot of the comic books just growing up, and I sort of felt for me anyway that I should sort of view the script as its own thing and not try to compare and contrast the previous stuff and just treat it like its own little universe. And Darcy wasn’t in the comics so I didn’t have to worry about continuity or anything like that."

If you could be a superhero, what power would you like?

Natalie Portman: "Teleportation. Useful."

Kat Dennings: "Power of healing. That would come in handy a lot. With the guy who got stabbed in the eye today."

Natalie Portman: "Poor guy, did you guys hear about that?"

Kat Dennings: "That’s not cool."

Natalie Portman: "At the panel, someone stabbed a guy in the eye with a pencil and they had to..."

When you were in there?

Natalie Portman: "No, no, no, right before but it was delayed and we were delayed like an hour. I hope he’s okay. We haven’t heard anything about this person if they’re okay or not."

Kat Dennings: "We hope that he’s okay. We were like, 'What’s going on? Why aren’t we going and doing our panel?' They were like, 'Well, someone got stabbed.' So don’t stab. Don’t stab. That’s not okay."

Kat, how was your experience on a big set with crazy costumes?

Kat Dennings: "[...]Our first AD had his own voice throwing equipment so he was standing in video village and he’d be like, 'Back to ones.' His voice would echo through the whole outside."

Natalie Portman: "Megaphones and everything."

Kat Dennings: "There were hidden things. It was pretty big budget I would say, pretty nuts. And everyone was so good at their job. If you were like, 'Oh, man, I could really use a piece of toast made out of rubber,' somebody would be like, FWING! They were so prepared it was amazing."

Natalie Portman: "You know, everyone always champions the low budget independent stuff but it’s nice when people get compensated for their work. Like you see an entire crew getting paid for their jobs, there’s something to be said for that because when movies are made for no money, that means that everyone’s basically volunteering. Everyone’s like, 'Yay, you made it for no money.' You’re like you’re making people work in a sweat shop."

Kat Dennings: "I just came off of one of those. I had come off of something that was done for like two dollars and then I came and did this. I was like, 'Oh my god. This is awesome.' It felt good. I’m not going to lie. It was pretty great. I don't know how many more movies I’ll be in like this, but it was good to have one."

Natalie Portman: "Appreciate the experience."

Kat Dennings: "I really do. I cherish it."