Newlywed Scarlett Johansson seems to have her eyes on comic book roles as of late. First was last year’s The Spirit; next up is the highly-anticipated sequel to Jon Favreau’s Iron Man as Natasha Romanoff, a.k.a. Black Widow.

Despite her scoring several Golden Globe nominations, Johansson wasn’t offered the role—Emily Blunt (The Devil Wears Prada) was in line to portray the Russian spy. After Blunt dropped out due to scheduling conflicts, Johansson was quick to take action:

“I actually met with [director] Jon Favreau and [Marvel Studios executive] Kevin Feige a year before pre-production started. We just talked about some of the super heroines in the Marvel Universe and one of them was Black Widow. I think they were kind of toying with the idea of putting the character into the film and how they would work it in and all that. When I met Jon the second time I had red hair and a part of that, I think, was me wanting to experiment with my hair color and the other part of that was me kind of hoping that Jon would like the fact that I was experimenting.”

While she was quick to pick up after Blunt, the Vicky Cristina Barcelona actress wasn’t always too keen on superhero films.

“I had never really thought about it before. Honestly, I have to say that before I saw the first Iron Man movie I never really thought much about playing a superhero. Certainly there is a major geek within me and actually kind of just right on the surface. But I didn’t really, I think, because when I saw the first one it was because my Mom called me and said, ‘Did you see Iron Man?’ I was like, Iron Man?’ I mean I would see it but it’s not really my kind of thing.’ But I thought if my Mom’s telling me to see Iron Man than it’s got to be great because my Mom’s not a comic book fan. When I went to see it I was just so blown away. I’d never seen anything like that before in the genre.”

When the fact that both her and her husband Ryan Reynolds are accumulating quite the list of superhero roles between them, Scarlett admits that she’s got a lot of catching up to do.

“I have quite a few stacks of comic books. You know, we’re in completely different comic book universes but it’s something that I’m certainly delving into for the first time and there’s quite a stack.”

Iron Man 2 is expected to hit theaters next May.