Kate Mara Did Not Have A Good Time On 'Fantastic Four'

Most everyone who worked on Josh Trank's 2015 Fantastic Four has, at some point, wished they could forget about the whole thing. From Trank, who has been open about his clashes with studio execs behind the scenes, to the cast members, all of whom came out of the box office bomb relatively unscathed, and even bigger stars in some cases. One of those cast members is Kate Mara, who recently revealed that she had a "horrible experience on Fantastic Four," apart from meeting her now-husband Jamie Bell. But she doesn't want to forget it happened, because it was a "good learning experience" for the actress.

In an interview with Emmy Magazine, Kate Mara admitted that she "had a horrible experience on Fantastic Four":

"I've never talked about it before. I married one of my costars, so I don't regret doing that movie at all . But do I wish I had responded differently to certain things? Yes, definitely."

Mara added that she had two "horrendous experiences" working with male directors and elaborated, "Have I not gotten along with a female director? Absolutely. And was it not the greatest work experience? Sure. But there was never a time that I felt, 'This is happening because I'm a woman.' Where with the male directors, it 100 percent was only happening with me; it was a power dynamic thing."

Mara doesn't explicitly mention director Josh Trank or his treatment toward her in particular, but expanded on what she meant to Collider, explaining that she often felt that she "let [things] slide" far too often on the set of Fantastic Four:

"I think that the thing that I always go back to on that one is that I think I should have followed my instincts more. Like when my gut was telling me, 'You probably shouldn't let that slide, what that person just said,' or if you're feeling a certain way about what an energy is like and how that is affecting your performance. You're being paid to do a certain thing and if something is in the way of that, you have the right to speak up and say, 'I'm actually not able to do what I am here to do because of X, Y and Z.'"

But Mara said that while she has regrets over her experience on Fantastic Four, she doesn't regret having done the film, as it was "a good learning experience." Through her time on the superhero blockbuster, Mara revealed that she learned to speak up for herself.

"I think that speaking up is something that I think that we all probably learn it over and over again, to follow your instincts and if you're feeling a certain thing that is uneasy or whatever, there's a reason for it. But, because it was such a big movie and again, usually, except in this case, when you're in a big superhero movie they usually do incredibly well, like almost always. So even if it's challenging, or this or that, or not everything's perfect, it's probably good for you to do it. That was sort of what I was being told and also was telling myself. And I don't regret doing it at all, but do regret not having stood up for myself. I regret that for sure," Mara said.

It's hard to keep pinpoint exactly what went wrong with Fantastic Four, which failed on a multitude of levels. Trank was the fall-guy for the box office failure of the film, though he left during principal photography and has famously distanced himself from the project in the years since. The cast members rarely reference it either. Bu in Mara's case, the star of Hulu's new series A Teacher is doing all right in the aftermath.