Maria Bakalova Still Has a Burning Question About the Princess in ‘Creature Commandos’

Maria Bakalova knows what she’s doing when it comes to finding top-tier creative partners in film and television. As a student studying at the National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts in Bulgaria, she gravitated toward acclaimed filmmakers Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov, a directing duo she still works with to this day. She met Julian Kostov in 2019 when he shared a casting notice for Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, the movie that’d ultimately earn Bakalova an Oscar nomination. Now, Kostov is Bakalova’s producing partner. Under their Five Oceans banner they produced Triumph with Grozeva and Valchanov directing. The film was selected as the Bulgarian entry for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. Next up on Bakalova’s list of dream collaborators she’s hoping to establish a long-standing creative partnership with? James Gunn. In fact, during her Collider Ladies Night interview, Bakalova noted, “If I have to choose one person that I want to stick with the rest of my life, it will be him.”

Bakalova worked with Gunn for the first time on Guardians on the Galaxy Vol. 3 in which she played Cosmo the Space Dog. While Gunn’s run with the Marvel Cinematic Universe would come to an end there, his working relationship with Bakalova wouldn’t. Gunn made the shift from Marvel to DC, and brought Bakalova along with him. He cast her as Princess Ilana Rostovic in his adult animated series, Creature Commandos, the project that’d kick off the new DC Universe. At the start of the show, Task Force M is brought in to protect the Princess and the nation of Pokolistan from Circe (voiced by Anya Chalotra) and the Sons of Themyscira. However, as the season progresses, those involved start to question who they’re protecting the Princess from – and if she needs protecting at all.

With all seven episodes of Creature Commandos Season 1 now available to stream on Max, Bakalova joined me for a Collider Ladies Night conversation to revisit her journey to the DC animated series, and to share her take on what goes down during the finale episode of the season.

Bakalova Had No Idea What Making ‘Guardians 3’ Would Entail

Playing Cosmo the Space Dog was anything but a traditional voice acting experience.

When one scrolls through Bakalova’s filmography and comes across Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 with “voice” next to the credit, one might assume it was a traditional voice acting performance – after principal photography, Bakalova hopped into a sound booth and recorded Cosmo’s dialogue. However, that wasn’t the case. Bakalova began:

“I got this audition not knowing what I’m auditioning for because it wasn’t written, ‘It’s going to be Guardians of the Galaxy,’ or, ‘It’s going to be a dog.’ Nothing. I just did an audition where I was required to do something with a high-pitched energy. And then, the next thing was to do a Zoom audition with Sarah [Finn] and James, and then I saw that that’s a dog. I was like, ‘Okay. That’s interesting. Should I go on all fours? What do I do?’ [Laughs] [James] was very supportive from the beginning, and I was excited to do it. I was like, ‘Okay, wonderful,’ calling my team, my agents, ‘How do we do this? Do we go in a, I don’t know, voiceover booth? Do we do ADR?’ And I got the email that James wants to do it in person. He wants me to go to set. I was like, ‘Really? But what am I even going to be doing there?’”

Bakalova wound up getting the ultimate opportunity to play and transform as an actor. In addition to voicing Cosmo, she also got the chance to do motion capture for the character on set.

“I wore a mo-cap suit, and I was really able to crawl on all fours and play like a child. In Guardians there a lot of kids, and one of them was like, ‘What are you doing? Aren’t you too old to be on the floor? My mom is not letting me get dirty.’ I was like, ‘Well, my mom is letting me get dirty!’ I was going there and really enjoying it because at the end of the day, that’s the biggest gift that we all have, to play, to imagine. To imagine that, ‘Today, I’m a dog. Tomorrow, maybe I’m going to be a tree, or the next day I might go to the moon. Who knows?’ That’s the power of being able to go to different places through acting.”

Bakalova didn’t play a tree or go to the moon next, but rather, she became the Princess of Pokolistan.

Maria Bakalova Doesn’t Want to Stop Working With James Gunn – Ever

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3. and Creature Commandos wasn’t enough. Bakalova wants more James Gunn projects.

Related

The Fate of ‘Creature Commandos’ Has Been Decided Ahead of Its January Season Finale

The series has kicked off the new DC era.

Initially, Bakalova wasn’t thrilled when her Guardians run with Gunn came to an end given his shift from the MCU to the new DC Universe, but then the call came for her to make that move with him. “I will forever be grateful because my dream is to be able to work with him again and again and again.” In fact, Bakalova even went as far to say, “If I have to choose one person that I want to stick with the rest of my life, it will be him because he knows how to mix comedy with tragedy, with love, with action, with just everything together, and it’s always beautiful.”

Sure enough, Gunn’s knack for mixing genres would result in an especially rich and layered character for Bakalova to tackle. “I got the script and I read it, and I was excited about my character because she had multiple layers.” Bakalova continued, “She was something way different than me — feminine and a woman. ‘I’m a woman and I know what I want. I want this, and I’m going to achieve it.’ I’m not like that. I’m very shy.”

A ‘Borat’ Lesson Came in Handy for Maria Bakalova Making ‘Creature Commandos’

Princess Ilana’s truth was teased in the very first episode.

[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the Season 1 finale of Creature Commandos, “A Very Funny Monster.”]Ever since it was first announced that Bakalova would be voicing an original character in Creature Commandos, there was loads of speculation. Would it eventually be revealed she was a pre-existing DC character all along? Is she truly a victim in this whole situation, or is there more to it?

If you’re still with us, you’ve seen the Creature Commandos finale, “A Very Funny Monster,” and know that Princess Ilana was indeed the villain of Season 1. While there was a significant amount of back and forth on the matter throughout its seven-episode first season, Bakalova insists there are quite a few moments that tease Ilana’s truth in earlier episodes.

“You see her with her mother and you see her not really paying a lot of attention. It’s like a single word of, ‘Oh, my poor mother.’ She’s like, ‘This is the Queen, and I’m so sad for her.’ But if you’re that sad for her, maybe you’re going to pay more attention to her. Maybe you’re gonna introduce people to her. There are a lot of Easter eggs that she’s also playing way too innocent and maybe a bit silly, too, like, ‘I love Americans, and I want to lead my country to the 21st Century!’ Is she saying this for real, or is she saying it just to make them believe what they want to believe?”

Princess Ilana’s manipulative tactics actually reminded Bakalova of her experience working on Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. She explained:

“People usually can get convinced. I learned that because of Borat. If you let them lead you, you can pretty much trick them to reveal a lot of their sides, and that’s what she’s doing. She’s just letting them believe what they want to believe, that they’re there to be heroes and to save the day, when she doesn’t really need to be saved. She just doesn’t need them there at all. She better get them out of there. Of course, there is this moment of her probably getting attracted to Rick Flag, or maybe she isn’t. Maybe she wants to distract him from the mission because he’s smart. Maybe he’s gonna catch onto something that she has in mind. And she succeeds in that. She tricks him in a way of manipulating him to make him not fall in love, but fall attracted to her, and it’s destroying his reputation in front of the Creatures, and it’s making him a little bit weird for her. So, she’s really good as a manipulator. My question is, why is she in this position? What does she have to do with wanting to have all the power in the world?”

While Creature Commandos Season 1 didn’t answer those particular questions, Bakalova did come up with some reasons of her own.

“I don’t know, maybe her mother. It’s always something within your childhood when you grow up and you want to be very dominant, you want control, you want power. We have a lot of references like Princess Ilana Rostovic, when people have a little bit of power and they want to dominate the world when they’re in charge of a country and they just want to take over the whole country and even more, and it’s never enough. Unfortunately, that’s sometimes reality. A lot of the reasons why people turn this way is because of their childhood and because they’ve been dismissed by their parents and they haven’t been believed in. So then, later on, when they grow up, they want to prove that they’re worthy of something. They just want power. They want control so they can never feel that small again. So maybe, when she was younger, her mother never paid attention to her. Her mother never treated her like she was worth it. Her dad, as well. We never see her dad. We never know anything about him. But I feel like she wants to dominate and she wants to destroy this country because she doesn’t want to feel small, and be able to be hurt again.”

Maria Bakalova Addresses That Crushing ‘Creature Commandos’ Finale Death

“It’s not fair.”

The Princess shows us how far she’s willing to go to maintain power in an especially devastating way in the finale episode. Everyone in Task Force M is guilty of committing some sort of crime and showing zero hesitation when taking lives to complete their mission – except Nina Mazursky (voice by Zoe Chao). As we see in the finale, the only reason Nina finds herself at Belle Reve is because she’s different.

After spending the entire season being kind hearted and a beacon of light, it’s absolutely crushing to see Nina of all the Creature Commandos pay the consequences. In the Season 1 finale, Nina reluctantly agrees to be the one to assassinate the Princess while she goes for a swim. However, things don’t go according to plan, the Princess gets the upper hand and kills Nina instead. As The Bride (Indira Varma) says to Ilana before shooting her for killing Nina, she “took the life of the only friend I have. And the only one of us with an ounce of kindness in her veins.”

For the viewer, it hurts, and Bakalova knows it does.

“It’s not fair. It’s not fair to have Nina being a monster just because she’s born different in the first place and be locked in prison because she’s just in the sea, standing on a rock, just resting for a little bit. That’s such a great commentary on the world, that we treat people that are different poorly because we don’t understand them. You don’t need to understand them. You just need to appreciate them. So, Nina is probably one of the most empathetic characters for all of us, because it’s not her fault that she ended up there.”

There’s no denying that Nina didn’t deserve what she was subjected to at Belle Reve and with Task Force M, but, Bakalova playfully noted, “She shouldn’t have approached the Princess.” Bakalova went on to point a finger at the Task Force M member she thinks should have been responsible for that part of the plan; “Why is [Nina] the one who has to do the dirty job? I mean, that Bride? For real?”

She continued:

“Maybe that was not the right approach on the Princess’ side because she could have only just taken the knife and thrown it away instead of pointing it at her. But, I mean, why is Nina there? Why isn’t the Bride there? Because she’s better underwater? I mean, come on. The Bride can also swim! Why? Why is Nina, again, sent to do the dirty work?”

Looking for even more on Bakalova’s experience making Creature Commandos, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Bodies Bodies Bodies, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, and more? Be sure to check out our entire hour+ Collider Ladies Night conversation in the video at the top of this article, or you can listen to the interview in podcast form below:

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In “Creature Commandos,” Amanda Waller assembles a covert team of monstrous operatives, including a werewolf, vampire, and gorgon, to undertake high-risk missions deemed too perilous for human agents.

Release Date

December 5, 2024

Cast

Indira Varma
, Sean Gunn
, Alan Tudyk
, Zoe Chao
, David Harbour
, Frank Grillo
, Peter Serafinowicz
, Jake Tapper
, Tony Cavalero
, Viola Davis
, Maria Bakalova
, Anya Chalotra
, Flula Borg
, Michael Rooker
, Robbie Daymond
, Keith Ferguson
, Piotr Michael
, Derek Phillips
, Maury Sterling
, Paul Ben-Victor
, Joe Zieja
, Steve Agee
, Stephanie Beatriz
, Linda Cardellini
, Keston John

Seasons

1

Network

Max

Expand

Creature Commandos Season 1 is available to stream on Max.

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