Name: Isabela Merced (née Moner)
Hometown: Cleveland, Ohio
Current role: Anya Corazón in Madame Web
Teen Vogue: If you could be the main character in any TV show or movie that’s not your own, who would you be and why?
Isabela Merced: You know, I really like Big Little Lies [from David E. Kelley]. I thought that show was so good, and it made me want to pretend to be a rich housewife in that neighborhood. Yeah, it was iconic.
It’s 9 a.m. in Los Angeles, and Isabela Merced is getting ready to start her first full press day for Madame Web, the latest addition to Sony's Marvel-adjacent Spider-Man Universe. In the world of superhero movies, every single detail is meticulously outlined, but for the Peruvian-American star, things are not going quite as planned. “I made the mistake of taking too many vitamins this morning without eating, and I wanted to throw up,” she tells Teen Vogue over the phone, “but other than that, great start to press day.”
Madame Web premiered globally on February 14 and stars Dakota Johnson as a New York City paramedic embodying a young version of the titular clairvoyant mutant. Merced plays a still-powerless, teenage version of Anya Corazón, except for fugacious visions of the future where she’s reached her full Spider-Girl potential as part of a still-unnamed and underexplored vigilante Spider-Women trio alongside Sydney Sweeney’s Julia Cornwall and Celeste O’Connor’s Mattie Franklin.
When she first went for the role of Anya a couple or so years ago, Merced didn’t even know what she was auditioning for. “There was no description of the character; it was all code names, so I had no idea. It was top secret,” the Teen Vogue New Hollywood alum admits. “Honestly, they didn't even really explain that it might be superheroes. It was kind of just hush-hush and really low-key.”
She landed a final callback in the middle of filming the long-anticipated adaptation of John Green’s Turtles All the Way Down in Boston and flew back to L.A. during an off weekend to do a reading with her prospective costars. She still wasn’t really sure what she was up for. “I had my suspicions, and Anya Corazón was definitely one of them, but I wasn't sure. It was a lovely surprise [when I did find out], and I was like, ‘This is so cool. Not only do I have a job now, but I get to play a superhero,’” she says between laughs.
Though we arguably don’t get to see much of superhero Anya Corazón in this movie, which serves as a mere introduction of her younger self, Merced still put her heart and soul into her preparation, devouring every piece of lore she could find on the internet. “Before having been introduced to her through this movie, I had just seen pictures of her online, like on Twitter, in comic book fan page art, and that's about it,” Merced says. “When they presented her to me, I didn't even know [anything about her.] Obviously, I knew she was Latina because Anya Corazón, like, that name is so Hispanic, but [that was the extent of it].”
Merced, like her costars, was given a pack of comics tracing back her character’s origins, which she “immediately” started reading before purchasing even more material on her own. Anya — also known by the codename Araña, Spanish for spider — made her debut in 2004’s Amazing Fantasy #1, and though the character’s web expands wider in the written media, it was in TV where Merced found the most exciting nugget about Corazón. “I found out that she's somehow laced to Miles Morales. And Miles Morales is my favorite Spider-Man ever so I was really excited about that. I was like, maybe one day [Anya could be in a movie with] Miles Morales.” (If that ever happens, she already envisions her friend, fellow actor Jaden Michael, playing the Afro-Latin arachnid. “That would be my dream casting, but maybe it's because I'm biased,” she adds.)
Putting your own spin on a role that already exists and is loved by many is no small task, but it’s even tougher when it’s being rewritten for a new media and with meager screen time, all limitations Merced is keenly aware of.
“No matter what, when you take a character from a page and put it on to screen, you're going to breathe new life into it, and you're going to automatically and maybe subconsciously put your thoughts and emotions [onto them],” Merced explains. “I think [Anya and I] had a lot in common already. I relate to her in the sense that we like to make sense of things.” She also sees herself in the “brainiac” side of Anya. (A little reminder that Merced skipped two grades in middle school.)
“She likes Sudoku, I love Sudoku,” the actor jokes before getting a bit more earnest. “For her, it's a little different because she needs to be smart, she needs to get good grades, and that's how she's going to excel in a world where she's already so far behind. It's the only way.”
Anya Corazón's backstory is largely glossed over in the movie. Before she joins the rest of the titular roles trying to escape from “ceiling guy” (a.k.a. Ezekiel Sims, who in the movie is presented as an amalgam of comic-book Sims and fellow supervillain Morlun), we only see the character once. She briefly crosses paths with Johnson's Cassie Webb in the building they both reside in, stalling to get another extension on her overdue rent. We later find out she lives alone and her father, whose occupation is undisclosed, has been deported.
For the rest of the film, Merced’s character is pretty much clad in a noughties uniform, with a campy yellow crop top that reads “I eat math for breakfast.” It’s either-love-it-or-hate-it costuming, but Merced loved it. “I thought that was cute,” she says, her pitch noticeably getting higher with excitement. “I love that they really kept her fashion-forward. You know, a lot of times, they put teenagers in clothes that I just don't think teenagers will wear. And in this one, they put her in a crop top, low-rise jeans, and her little velour jacket. Tell me that a teenager wasn't wearing that in 2003? [Also], seeing a girl who’s super fashion-forward and smart, [I loved that because] I just feel like people think these two can’t co-exist.”
Merced also enjoyed her hair and makeup, which was minimal and silky straight with some shiny silver hoops poking her strands between action scenes. However, she hopes to get a bit more experimental when — or if — she does get to step into Anya’s shoes again. “I hope to take bigger risks with the hair next time around. Anya's hair in the comics is so cool. I like the spiky hair because even the comic itself was made in the early 2000s so a lot of inspiration to be had in culture.”
The ‘00s aspect of the film is loud and clear. Some might even argue the film itself feels like a 2000s superhero movie — for better or for worse. We get DKNY subway ads, a whole billboard promoting Beyoncé’s Dangerously in Love album, and even a scene set to Britney Spears’s then-timely hit “Toxic,” where the main trio impresses a group of jocks dancing on top of a diner table before all hell breaks loose and Johnson’s Cassie saves them from Sims, once again, by crashing a NYC taxi through the diner wall.
“When they tracked the taxi cab in there for the first time, we're sitting there, mouths open,” Merced says, emphasizing the crash was very much real. “They described it as way less crazy than it actually was. Because no one had seen it actually done. They were like, ‘There'll be a little bit of glass here and there. It's breakaway glass, it’s not going to grab you in the eye but maybe you should turn your head just in case.’ But, it was raining glass. I think it was one of those moments, where, as an actor, you are like, ‘Wait, did that just happen?’ When are you going to get to see a taxi cab bust through the wall of the diner? The adrenaline was rushing through me for sure.”
“By the way, they did build the diner out of nowhere,” Merced continues. “It wasn't even on the map. It was a small town. They had it built for like a month, so these locals were driving by and seeing a diner being like, ‘When the hell did that get there? And you know what's even funnier? In one day, it was gone.”
The other action-packed scene in the movie happens towards the end at a fireworks factory next to the iconic neon Pepsi-Cola sign located in Queens, New York. It serves as the origin of Madame Web and the apparent demise of Sims, with explosions galore. “It was just a lot,” Merced says of the explosive paraphernalia. “Those were long days for sure. I remember being completely out of the loop. I asked what was going on [multiple times]. At one point, they yelled out that [Cassie] was about to die, and I didn't even know where she was dying. So when you see it put together [it feels brand new because] I didn't even know what was going on every day.”
It was all a bonding experience for Merced, Sweeney, and O’Connor, who are in nearly all of their scenes together. In fact, her costars are a primary reason Merced would like to explore more in the Madame Web universe. “I literally just want to do another movie because I just want to be with [them],” Merced says. “Celeste and Sydney, to me, are just a group that I never could have imagined happening in my life … it's just 100% love and support, and it was a blast from the start to the finish, from the day that we met to now, and we're stronger than ever as a group. I want to be in the middle of that again, and I really hope we get to do that.” (A testament to their friendship, the trio has now established a multi-platform communication system with group chats galore. “We have them on Instagram, on iMessage… definitely on WhatsApp,” Merced confesses.)
For anyone who watches the movie, it’s clear that Madame Web is just a starting chapter, and whether a follow-up ends up happening or not, Merced is not hanging her superhero cape anytime soon. In the summer of 2023, it was announced that the actor was joining the upcoming Superman: Legacy movie, expected to premiere in July 2025, taking on the role of Hawkgirl.
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As Hawkgirl, Merced will become part of a very select group of actors, including Ryan Reynolds and Chris Evans, to bring both Marvel and DC characters to the big screen. It’s a feat that still takes her aback. “I'm very shocked still and maybe it's because the movie hasn't come out yet,” she explains. “It is kind of a concept to me. I haven't [filmed anything], so it's very random. I don't really know how to describe it. It kind of just feels like I'm just being thrust into a dream. It's surreal. And there's nothing I love more than good action in a movie, so I just am so excited to fly as Hawkgirl.”
Legacy is just one of many high-profile projects that Merced has in the pipeline. After Madame Web, she has Turtles All the Way Down, which will take her out of the superhero world momentarily — though, as Merced jokes, “John Green has his own universe; he has a multiverse” — before moving on to the sophomore season of The Last of Us as Dina and Fede Álvarez’s revamped Alien franchise, among other standalone projects.
“I see people on the internet being shocked that I'm getting all these random franchises, but I think they should know that I'm just as shocked, too,” Merced quips when discussing her stacked lineup. “I audition for these things just like any other actor, and then they just say yes, and then I'm just sitting here like, ‘Oh, so now I have to shoot two things at the same time.’ But I'm just trying to be a working actor, so I'm going to do my best. These are insane gets that are so well established, so it's only up to me to mess it up. It's only going to be my fault if it sucks. So it is a lot of pressure, but I'm just hoping.”
