Ruaridh Mollica on joining 'VisionQuest' and being 'honoured' to be a bisexual actor playing a bisexual character in the MCU: 'I Feel So Seen'

Anyone who waited by the stage door of London's Trafalgar Theater last year may have been unwittingly given an important clue about a development in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In a move unlikely to have been approved by Kevin Feige, Scottish actress Ruaid Mullica, who made her West End debut in Clarkston, in […]

Anyone who waited by the stage door of London's Trafalgar Theater last year may have been unwittingly given an important clue about a development in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

In a move that Kevin Feige is unlikely to approve of, Scottish actress Ruaid Mullica, who made her West End debut in Clarkston, turned up at the door one night wearing a Vision Quest hat. Smiling next to her: her co-star Joe Locke, who wears an "Agatha Full Length" hat. RELATED STORIES Hillary Clinton co-hosts James Murdoch's Vox Media podcast on the 2026 midterm elections with Cara Swisher.

Locke at the time had already been seen in the "WandaVision" spin-off "Agatha All Along" as Billy Kaplan, the reincarnation of Billy Maximoff (one of the sons of Wanda Maximoff and Vision). But it was still several weeks before news leaked that Mollica, a Sundance headliner the previous year for her lead performance in Sebastian, would be joining the MCU as her older twin brother Tommy Shepard/Tommy Maximoff (also the superhero Speed) in the next series. Popular in Variety

"It was a little secret that we had to stick together on stage...so these were just some hints and tips!" Mullika tells Variety with an excited smile from the downstairs living room of London's Raffles Hotel. We're talking the morning before the UK release of 'VisionQuest' (out now on Disney Plus) and the actor is quickly emerging as a ball of energy and enthusiasm (a grueling schedule of unsolicited interviews still lies ahead).

The young-looking 26-year-old has made it big in the indie world thanks to Mika Makella's 2024 tender drama Sebastian, in which she played an aspiring writer in London who moonlights as a male escort at night. But by the time of the British Independent Film Awards at the end of the year, where he was nominated for Best Performance, he had VisionQuest in mind, giving him one of the quickest leaps from arthouse to superhero world to date.

Interestingly, just before posting her first selfie tape, "VisionQuest" (for a show she knew next to nothing about, not even the title), Mollica appeared in "Franchise," HBO's satirical take on the superhero franchise industry, playing a PA on the set of a painfully spandex-heavy film.

"So when I saw the Marvel logo, I thought, Oh, well, I'm never going to get that ... because I've just pissed them off!" Fortunately, it didn't seem like a big deal, she says with a laugh, and within months she was invited to New York to audition alongside her Vision self, Paul Bettany, and Vision Quest creator and showrunner Terry Matalas.

Tommy Mollica is introduced in "Vision Quest" in the middle of the first episode as a teenage hitman, pickpocket and criminal on the streets of London. "He's a man," he says, adding that many of the references he used came from Matt Damon's performance in "Good Will Hunting."

"I didn't take him as an orphan. He has to make himself who he is, and that's a loneliness and a longing for family." "And Matt Damon portrayed that character so incredibly well that I feel like he's the archetype for a lot of male characters," she says.

But, as the second spin-off of a show in Phase IV's complex universe of Marvel characters (many of whom were defeated at the end of Phase Three), there's a heavy backstory to contend with. Briefly, at the end of Agatha the Whole, Shepard—drowning—has Tommy Maximoff's consciousness put into his body by Billy Locke.

"And suddenly, my character has visions of a family, but with a dad who's a robot and a mom who's a witch... and they're the Avengers... and there's lasers and guns and goddamn explosions!"

While Maksimov's unorthodox heritage was something Molika had to work on getting her head around, there was another element of the character that hit very close to home: her bisexuality.

"I feel like Marvel did a great job casting a bisexual actor for this, and it's an honor to portray that in the MCU," he says. "I feel so seen."

With Locke as her superhero sibling, Mollica is happy with the fact that "these weird twin brothers are together in the MCU ... it's so cool."

Mollica says that there were discussions about the fact that Tommy was attracted to other men on the show.

He's flirting with Lisa Molinari, but I think he's saying, "That makes me look more bisexual." Because that's the whole point. It's not necessarily about who you date, it's about who you are inside and who you want to flirt with. So I hope that my being bisexual and playing this role is good for people to feel seen and represented."

Molika says that when she stepped into the role, she was simply being herself. But there was another personal factor at play here, one—unlike Tommy's sexuality—that didn't exist in the comic books.

At the time of her audition, it was unclear whether Mullica - born in Italy but raised in Edinburgh - should use an American or English accent. And when we were doing it, Paul was just like, "Terry, what do we think of his accent?" It was." Molika's answer: "Really? Can a Marvel superhero be Scottish?

Sadly, Mollica can't claim to be the first Scottish superhero on screen (he looked it up - Richard Madden won that crown as Icaris in Eternals), but it's still something he's immensely proud of, if no less worryingly so.

"It's always great to be a Scottish champion," he says, adding that he's very jealous of Ewan McGregor, who has been able to "be Scottish, even in his American roles."

And yet, while Mollica isn't quite McGregor yet, her Scottishness is something she's been able to carry over into several upcoming projects.

Earlier this year, he filmed the independent film Naked in London, based on the memoir by Lorna Tucker and led by Florence Hunt's Bridgerton. Mollica says Tucker chose her — and the entire cast — "because of who we are." He was practically playing himself, "which was scarier and a lot more vulnerable because you're not hiding behind a character." The experience, he says, was the first job where he "realized I was an artist — because it was the first time you weren't going to act."

Following Naked, Mollica jumped right on a motorcycle alongside Channing Tatum for Brad Pitt's Isle of Man, playing a (Scottish) rider about the famous breed. It was a role that his agent practically bullied into, so that the actor — quite by accident — passed his motorcycle test in January. He texted me to ask, "Can you send me as many photos and videos of you on your bike as you want," — he was just sending them for casting and I kept sending them until they said, "OK, you can have a session!"

And just this week it was announced that Mollica is joining the cast of The Laird, Paramount+'s very Scottish epic about family feuds and the spoiled billionaires they create in the Highlands, led by Kenneth Branagh. Mollica - who currently sports dyed ginger hair for the role (the series is now in production) - plays the son of Scottish landowner Branagh.

It's been a wild few years for Mollica, underscored by the show that just hit screens and the one she's about to film.

"I went to Paul Bethany to be my father to Ken Branagh, who is my father." “How is that possible?” he says.

Of course, if this trend continues, Mollica will have to have an American accent at some point.

"I can't do one!" He whispers when we say goodbye. "No, wait... for every casting director out there... I can do one!"