Now You See Me: Now You Don't star Rosamund Pike says she wanted her eccentric billionaire villain to be "worthy" of the franchise's Four Horsemen.
"I wanted to do a movie that I felt people would just really enjoy, and it wasn't too intellectually demanding. It was just a good time. I wanted to be part of something like that," Pike tells GamesRadar+. "And I really believe in the franchise. My part in it is to serve the franchise by delivering a villain that's worthy of these very intelligent horsemen. That was fun for me. It was sort of not too much pressure. But I had the freedom to play. And the chance to work with people I really admire. You know, the original Horsemen, they're all great. And they're great to work with. "
In Now You See Me: Now You Don't, Pike plays Veronika Vanderberg, the South African CEO of an unethical diamond company involved in money laundering and descendant of a billionaire family that is later revealed to have some pretty dark roots. The Four Horsemen, after taking a 10-year break, are suddenly called to reunite and retrieve a priceless diamond known as The Heart from Veronika's clutches.
Of course, Pike is no stranger to playing villains. She made her feature film debut in Die Another Day as Miranda Frost, an M16 agent who betrays Pierce Brosnan's James Bond before going on to play Amy Dunne in David Fincher's Gone Girl (though Amy is a hero in my heart, thank you very much).
"I wanted Veronica to be having fun. I think the best villains are, which I kind of learned probably post-Bond, really. They're most watchable when they're fun to watch and they're having fun," she explains.
"So I felt that was so important in her whole sort of mastery of the illusion of the diamond business, how you're selling and you're selling an illusion. It's all about playing with words and people's minds really, you know, saying that this thing is valuable. And we see her able to turn on a dime from being very plausible and magnanimous and speaking to the workers and the dignitaries at her diamond mine, and then we quickly see her being ruthless in the boardroom, and we think, oh, okay, I don't quite know where I am with this woman."
We won't spoil it for you, but there's a pretty incredible scene at the beginning of the film where Veronika displays just how powerful she truly is just by using her words. She's a commanding force, and the scene sets up how dangerous she is...and has the potential to be.
"She's sort of in a room full of men doing something that, as a woman, you might admire. You know, she takes these men to task, and yet there's also something uncomfortably kind of manipulative about it. I think, to me, it's important there's this sort of blurred line between someone who has feminist values that you might admire, and yet it also makes you uncomfortable because there's definitely something very wrong with it."
The third installment in the magician-heist franchise was directed by Ruben Fleischer from a screenplay by Michael Lesslie, the writing duo of Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese, and Seth Grahame-Smith. Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, and Isla Fisher return as the Four Horsemen, alongside three young con-artists/magicians played by Dominic Sessa, Justice Smith, and Ariana Greenblatt.
Now You See Me: Now You Don't will levitate into theaters on November 14, 2025. For more, check out our list of the most exciting upcoming movies in 2025 and beyond, or check out our list of movie release dates.
