#Vod Nordstrom

[olemisekunst]

Vod + burger phone 🍔

[billiuspendragon]

Fresh Meat - Vod's fashion sense

She just like slays all the time it's crazy

[naomicorrell]

Fresh Meat

[edtype]

Blurred Lines

Wife or fiancée?

Husband or fiancé?

[justzawe]

Zawe Ashton Covers AMAZING Magazine | Issue 4

Actor, author, playwright and new mum Zawe Ashton adds another string to her bow: supervillain. As she joins the Marvel Cinematic Universe, she tells AMAZING about her love of poetry, getting physical on the set of The Marvels and the unwavering support of her own parents.

Zawe Ashton is no stranger to playing the antagonist. From her very first film role as rude schoolgirl Bianca in 2009’s St Trinian's 2: The Legend Of Fritton's Gold, to playing the intimidatingly cool Violet “Vod” Nordstrom in four seasons of student sitcom Fresh Meat and – more recently - as the rejected Julia Thistlewaite in 2022 period drama, Mr. Malcolm’s List, Ashton has a knack for taking on characters who appear unlikeable on paper… and making audiences fall in love with them. However, for her latest role as Dar-Benn in The Marvels, she had to go full villain.

“Very little can prepare you to have to embody an antagonist at this level, in a Universe that is literally not known to anyone – like our Space - and to make it real and impactful,” says the London-born actor, a new recruit to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. “There's something deeply humbling about having to return to the sandbox; you have to go back to the playground and that was something I was not expecting. You have to indulge in adult play and it’s surprisingly vulnerable. I know that there are gamers out there, there are cosplayers out there, there are adults who have managed to keep that level of childlike play going and I respect it so much. There's a self-consciousness that can take over if you are not careful. Trying to react realistically to a laser coming towards you is not something I’d done since I was seven years old, and I had to get to that level of childlike confidence to just delve into the imagination. Once that was all clearer, the villainous elements came so much from the physical world, with costume and hair.”

For 39-year-old Ashton, adult play will likely become a more frequent fixture in her life, thanks to her most exciting new role – as a mother. She welcomed her first child in 2022 with fiancé Tom Hiddleston, her co-star in the 2019 revival of Harold Pinter's Betrayal on London’s West End, later transferred to Broadway. “What has genuinely surprised me about motherhood is how much I don't feel ready to talk about it,” she laughs. “And this isn’t to shut down the conversation. I have gained so much insight from public people who have this incredible candour and this disarming, relatable dialogue about it very early on, but it's something that I am just dedicating time to absorbing. I’m listening rather than expelling energy. That genuinely has surprised me, because it's something you want to shout from the rooftops about; it's the most unparalleled, most important role in my life. The surprise has been how quiet I want to be about it. Maybe that's also me as a writer and this is something that will come through the pen at some point.”

Ashton attended London’s Anna Scher Theatre School from the age of six and was a member of the National Youth Theatre, before getting her degree in acting at Manchester Metropolitan University, but writing has always been significant in her life. She won the London Poetry Slam Championship in 2000, becoming the event’s youngest winner, at 17. “I may have been knocked off that pillar long ago, but in my head I'm still the youngest,” she laughs. “I love poetry. I had not written for a really long time; during the pandemic I lost a huge chunk of my creative soul when it came to putting pen to paper, which was really scary and was clearly the fallout of being in survival mode and feeling quite fearful. People's attention spans just went all sorts of different ways, didn't they? It was very hard for me to read, and it was very hard for me to write, which is very strange for me.

“More recently, a friend of mine from drama school who I used to do open mic nights with in Manchester – I used to perform poetry and she used to sing - asked me to write a poem for her wedding. I had a few moments where it was really tough, but I did it. I love her and I'm so happy for her, and being inspired enough to get a poem out and read it aloud really opened the floodgates. So, weirdly enough, I've been writing a lot of poetry recently and found a new love for it. I will always continue to use poetry as a way to understand the world. It's just so much part of who I am.”

For Zawe's full interview and shoot, order your copy of AMAZING issue 4 now. The Marvels is out now.

[callivich]

favorite female characters?

Hi anon! 💖

Here’s a list of my faves of all time:

Princess Leia

Dawn Darcy

Buffy Summers

Cordelia Chase

Darla

Janine Butcher-Evans-Malloy-Moon-Carter

Cristina Yang

Vod Nordstrom

Dana Scully

Eve Unwin

I can only put ten gifs in a post 😭 So I also wanna add - Miranda Bailey, Karen Hill, Adriana La Cerva, Ellie Sattler, Beth Pearson.

[a-little-vod-and-loki]

Why do I feel like Zawe and Tom are the type of couple to sit together and just read. And after 30 minutes, they switch books. And when they get bored, they switch on the TV and just binge random shit like Succession or like Euphoria.

Also I feel like Tom would put on, like, Fresh Meat or something and Zawe is begging him to turn it off but every time Vod comes on screen he's just like "Sssssh, look it's you!" and at one point Zawe' says, "No shit, Sherlock" and then Tom plays that pilot episode of Sherlock with Zawe in it and says "Sssssh, look it's you! AGAIN!"

[devouringyourson]

thinking about her [vod from fresh meat bringing a bag of pigs blood to the student protest and proudly showing it off going "don't worry I haven't done a murder it's pig blood im going to throw it...could be a statement, could be just some blood throwing, i mean as soon as you throw blood you're saying something really aren't you?]

[rex-o0]

[jpjosieandfriends]

The original Hartnell housemates vs their better, newer, improved replacements (according to Josie)

As Howard says, “bit heartless,” although not gonna lie I would watch the shit out a show featuring Josie and this extremely varied group of celebrities.

[olemisekunst]

Fresh Meat, Vod Nordstrom's Season 1 looks

[halfdesire]

thinking about how violet nordstrom’s mother has always made her feel like shit. how she’s had to take care of her mother since she was a child. how her mother said all sorts of terrible things to her that made her feel worthless. how violet took after her mother and got heavily into alcohol and drugs, to the point where she had to go to the hospital because she overdosed. how her father left her and her mother views her as a burden and a mistake.

but then there’s her housemates, who she truly views as family. though she’s not one for softness, she does love them. they’re train wrecks, sure, but they’re her train wrecks, so it’s okay. and even though she spent her childhood feeling unwanted, they love and support her. and when her mother comes around and fucks up the house, they’ve got no problem with helping violet pick up the pieces.

finally, violet’s got a home where she feels loved and supported. and it’ll make me cry every time i think about it.

[naomicorrell]

Vod - Fresh Meat

[incorrectfreshmeat]

oregon: just be yourself. say something nice.

vod: which one? i can’t do both.

[justzawe]

Zawe Ashton on resilience, tackling complex roles and the fight for on-screen representation

The actress took to the stage at the 2023 Bazaar Summit

When Zawe Ashton looks back at her career so far, she’s a little surprised: not at her own success, but at how she’s managed to navigate a notoriously tough industry so well. “When I talk about what I’ve been through, I think, why have I kept going?” the actress and writer told the audience at the 2023 Bazaar At Work Summit, at which she was a headline speaker. “I wonder if, to even become an actor, there needs to be something inside you that is already a little bit fractured. I think there’s something within me that somehow knows this level of crazy. When it gets really hard is when I feel my strongest or most determined.”

Anyone who has watched and loved the cult favourite TV show Fresh Meat will be very thankful indeed that Ashton did keep going. Her character – the straight-talking, drug-taking, chain-smoking and anti-establishment Vod Nordstrom – was a highlight of Jesse Armstrong’s hit series. The popularity of the sitcom-style show (and particularly of Vod) made Ashton a household name and, to this day, it’s a role she’s proud of playing. “Vod was very left-field, free-thinking and probably, I would say, a queer character without that being made explicit,” she said. “Fresh Meat was 11 years ago now, but there’s still a whole new wave of people who come up to me – lots of young actresses, of every ethnicity – who say thank you to me for being smelly, unlikeable, strange and punky, because there aren’t a wealth of women who are doing that on screen.”

Ashton clearly feels passionate about portraying real women in her work. In 2019, she published a fictionalised memoir, Character Breakdown, the title of which refers to the couple of lines an actor will receive with a script, which describe who the character is – for women, these mini biographies are often laughably simplistic and purely aesthetic. “They go from one extreme to another,” Ashton sighed with disbelief. “Where do we draw the line? If you’re not seeing women’s humanity, if you’re not seeing a full human life when you’re thinking about the ways in which you’re putting these descriptions together, then you’re not valuing women. And that’s a much bigger conversation than my industry.”

Throughout her career, Ashton has fought to play complex roles and has always emphasised the importance of making multi-faceted women of every ethnicity visible on screen. When she took the role of Vod, “growing up as a young, biracial girl in Hackney,” she was “willing to do whatever it took to make that character as edgy and authentic as I felt she could be, so that it would invite anyone not seeing that kind of representation to feel really seen”. In 2022, Ashton scored a role in the period drama Mr Malcom’s List, which was a seminal moment for her – and one which she credits to the success of Bridgerton's diverse casting. “I had never seen any actor who looked like me invited to the table to perform [something like that],” she said. “I hadn’t known necessarily that I was hurting so much, until I saw that representation happen and the success of it take everyone by storm.”

Since then, Ashton has continued to push the envelope. This year, she played villain Dar-Benn – a role traditionally written as male – in The Marvels, opposite Brie Larson as Carol Danvers. “The process of learning stunts and fighting is probably one of the most empowering things I’ve done!” she laughed. “But when I thought the film was finished, I got pregnant and had my baby. And then they told me to come back and reshoot basically the whole movie. That has been the biggest journey for me: my physical wellness, my ability to endure, to mentally switch back into that place postpartum and come back to kick some ass again.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, a boundary-breaking superhero feels like Ashton’s best-suited role to date. (x)

[suomisubs]