Iron Man Meets Ironheart: Watch Robert Downey Jr.’s Moving Conversation with Dominique Thorne
The two actors united for an in-depth chat about Marvel Television’s ‘Ironheart,’ with Downey praising Thorne’s ‘beautiful’ performance: ‘You’ve really done us proud.’
Marvel Television’s Ironheart has a new biggest fan: Tony Stark himself.
Marvel stars Robert Downey Jr. and Dominique Thorne recently sat down together for a heartwarming video conversation, uniting Iron Man and Ironheart for one heroic team-up. Thorne stars in Ironheart (streaming now on Disney+) as genius inventor Riri Williams, who returns to her hometown of Chicago to try and make her mark on the world. She soon finds herself wrapped in a twisty tale of technology and magic, as she crosses paths with the enigmatic Parker Robbins (Anthony Ramos), aka the Hood.
In their lengthy conversation, Downey gushed about the show, peppering Thorne with questions about the first three episodes. The actor — who is currently shooting the upcoming Marvel Studios film Avengers: Doomsday — praised Thorne’s performance and opened up about what it means to see a new young hero join the Marvel Cinematic Universe, years after he made his debut in 2008’s Iron Man.
“It’s mind-blowing for me,” Downey admits. “It’s a beautiful full circle, I’ve got to tell you. I’m so grateful.”
In some ways, Downey and Thorne’s friendship mirrors the relationship between Tony and Riri in the pages of Marvel Comics. Created by Brian Michael Bendis and Mike Deodato, Riri made her debut in INVINCIBLE IRON MAN (2015) #7, introduced as a scrappy young genius who studies at MIT and builds a state-of-the-art armored suit. Riri never takes up the Iron Man mantle, instead choosing to forge her own identity as the hero Ironheart. But she and Tony strike up a friendship, bonding over their shared love of engineering and their call to heroism.
In their conversation, Downey and Thorne discussed the similarities and differences between their two characters. After all, one is a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist and the head of a major tech company, and the other is a scrappy young kid from Chicago who crafts her suits out of spare parts. But both share a dream of using technology to help protect the world around them.
“[Riri] didn’t go seeking this hero mantle at all,” Thorne explains. “She started pursuing it for very different reasons. We see in the comics how she took the name because she lost her best friend and her stepfather from a gunshot wound to the heart. That is where the need and the desire to cloak herself [and] protect herself and her community, where all of that came from. That is very familiar to Mr. Tony Stark over there, wanting to cloak the world in a suit of armor.”
The two actors also bonded over shared experiences filming, like having to study engineering techniques like soldering and welding. Thorne admitted that she felt the weight of Iron Man’s legacy the first time she filmed a scene inside Ironheart’s heads-up display, aka the HUD.
“That, to me, was probably the moment of ‘Whoa, this is real,’” Thorne remembers with a laugh. “’This is Iron Man. This is Tony Stark. This is the HUD. This is insane!’ There’s definitely BTS somewhere of me losing my mind and laughing and trying to get it together.”
Downey closed out their conversation by praising Ironheart’s entire cast and eagerly awaiting the final episodes.
“Keep kicking ass out there,” he told Thorne. “Well done so far. You’ve really done us proud.”
All episodes of Marvel Television’s Ironheart are streaming now, only on Disney+.
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