{"id":36344,"date":"2025-07-03T21:38:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T21:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/36344\/"},"modified":"2025-07-03T21:38:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T21:38:12","slug":"lyric-ross-cherishes-her-ai-natalie-and-hopes-she-returns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/36344\/","title":{"rendered":"Lyric Ross Cherishes Her AI Natalie and Hopes She Returns"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t[This story contains spoilers from the Ironheart<\/a> finale.]<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s hard to forget Lyric Ross as Deja in This Is Us<\/a>. At such a young age, she delivered a standout performance. For some actors, that can be a hard act to follow in adulthood. Not for Ross. As the AI version of Riri Williams\u2019 best friend Natalie in Marvel Studios<\/a>\u2019 Ironheart series on Disney+, Ross has been one of the show\u2019s many unexpected delights.<\/p>\n

\n\tBlack Panther fans first met Ironheart\u2018s Dominique Thorne\u2019s Riri<\/a> in Black Panther 2: Wakanda Forever three years ago, but her character actually first appeared in the comics in 2016 in Invincible Iron Man\u00a0Vol. 3 #7. After several other comic appearances, she got her own standalone Ironheart comic in 2018. A teenage prodigy from the South Side of Chicago, Riri attends MIT with every intention of following in Tony Stark\u2019s or, rather, Iron Man\u2019s, footsteps. Lack of finances, however, complicates that goal in the Ironheart series created by playwright and former Snowpiercer staff writer Chinaka Hodge, which released its season finale on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\n\tProduced by Ryan Coogler, Ironheart showed a fallen hero in Riri. Her attempts to stay at MIT by any means necessary get her expelled, sending her back home to Chicago without any legitimate way to move forward with her own plans. Back home, she got mixed up with a nefarious group of hackers led by Anthony Ramos\u2019 character The Hood<\/a>. But she also has to face the hole left in her heart from losing her stepfather Gary (Chicago PD\u2019s LaRoyce Hawkins<\/a>) and best friend Natalie to violence. In her grief, she produces an AI version of her best friend whose loss is also felt by Xavier (Matthew Elam), Natalie\u2019s brother and maybe Riri\u2019s potential love interest.<\/p>\n

\n\tRoss spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about what makes her AI Natalie different from the real Natalie, how she and Thorne created their best friend chemistry, why Ironheart has been a great follow-up to This Is Us, filming in her native Chicago, ignoring the backlash and if we will see more of AI Natalie moving forward.<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/p>\n

\n\tWho is the real Natalie and who is the AI Natalie?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI think the AI Natalie is that light you can\u2019t put out even if you try. She is there to stay whether you like it or not. Very determined, little to no fear, which is one of the things I loved about her. You don\u2019t see her getting shaken up by anything really. She takes on challenges seamlessly. The real Natalie is a friend, nurturer, supporter. She\u2019s everything that she says she is, in all her confidence, and nobody can tell her different. She embraces challenges like AI Natalie, just with that confidence that she can do anything and everything. And she is always there for her friend Riri. So very similar, but, at the same time, they have their different struggles.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe haven\u2019t really seen much of the real Natalie. It\u2019s more so been flashbacks, but we get to come back to her at the end of the show and see she\u2019s a little more calm than AI Natalie, who\u2019s kind of all over the place and a very big personality, which they both have, but she\u2019s just a little bit more that in who she is, and she understands that and everything that comes with it. So, just different little things.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe\u2019s very smart. The AI Natalie does things that I don\u2019t think she\u2019s supposed to be able to do.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tOh, absolutely. And that is all shout out to Riri because that is her creation. [AI Natalie] couldn\u2019t do that alone, and, of course, [Riri] didn\u2019t do it on purpose, which shows you where her mind can go, the fact that she created something that she wasn\u2019t supposed to create that was bigger than her own vision should say a lot.<\/p>\n

\n\tTalk about how you and Dominique built the chemistry that we see, because it\u2019s quite electric.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tIt seems like it was there from the jump. From our first chemistry read and through our rehearsals, it just stayed consistent. Of course, we put our efforts in just being around each other and having conversations and lunches, if we could. We didn\u2019t always have that much time to just hang, but we would take some moments to just be in each other\u2019s presence and talk things out, laugh and just hash out random things. So, it was pretty easy and relaxing for me.<\/p>\n

\n\tLet\u2019s talk about what AI Natalie represents, because at the end of the day, it\u2019s still grief because, at the end of the day, she\u2019s lost her friend to gun violence.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI think one of the beautiful things about their dynamic is that Riri is forced to grieve in a way. She\u2019s been running away from all of that for I don\u2019t know how long, and rightfully so, nobody wants to relive those things in order to heal. But what Natalie comes with is a lot of accountability, a lot of honesty, vulnerability, and [Riri] learns a lot throughout that, I guess, new relationship and the contrast between the real Natalie and the AI Natalie. It\u2019s a lot to learn between the two and how to deal with tragedy like that, especially when it hits so close to home.<\/p>\n

\n\tNatalie\u2019s brother Xavier or Xay, as he\u2019s affectionately known, has a very different reaction to AI Natalie.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI would, too. It makes a lot of sense where AI Natalie is coming from, but she\u2019s focusing on the joy and happiness of all these memories that she\u2019s getting, not necessarily the bad part of whatever these people that were affected by those events are going through. It seems like she\u2019s blinded by all of the positivity coming from those memories, so she doesn\u2019t give room to understand the fact that it\u2019s not going to be the same with the people who are affected. And that comes with understanding humans and how they work, understanding that she is not human so she\u2019s not going to feel the same in any way. Even though she gets a sense of emotions, the human way of things is a lot harder to understand. Tech is easy for her. She\u2019s up for this new challenge of understanding what it means to live, what reality is. So, it\u2019s a pretty complex situation.<\/p>\n

\n\tTalk a little bit about playing Deja on This Is Us for so long and then being able to go into a completely different project. How gratifying is that? And what are the things that you learned playing Deja that help with this role?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tThis whole Ironheart Natalie situation was exactly what I was looking for. I wanted something completely different from Deja and from myself. I heard a lot of horror stories about people being on a show for however many years and not doing much outside of that, and they kind of get stuck in that cycle or rhythm that whatever show brings, and I didn\u2019t want to be like that. I was trying to find something that would really break me out of that shell. I [thought] a low budget indie film, but Marvel came along and they said they wanted me to be a part of this journey. I was really excited and really scared at the same time. This is unlike anything that I\u2019ve ever done, but I wanted to check my range as an actor and as a creative to see what I can do, and that\u2019s still the journey that I\u2019m on for whatever my next project will be.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd how dope was it to be able to do it in a project set in your city?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI was super excited. One of the things that I dreamed of when I was little is getting to go to work downtown in the city, just to do something. I didn\u2019t care if it was extra work on Chicago Fire. That was Hollywood to me. I loved seeing the skyscrapers while getting to do what I love. So the fact that I was being taken out of my home in L.A. for however many years just to come back to do something on this scale is, I don\u2019t know, I can\u2019t explain it. It was that personal to me, and to my folks. All my family is from Chicago. It\u2019s a really cool situation that I couldn\u2019t come up with myself. That was God.<\/p>\n

\n\tGiven all the backlash to Ironheart before people even saw it, how gratifying is it to see the outpouring of love afterwards? Knowing in your heart that you had done something that was spectacular, how special is it to see people feel that and give you that love back?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tAbsolutely. There was a lot of heart behind it. I knew what we put into it was what we were going to get out of it, whether it looked that way or not. I just knew that that was going to happen. And the fact that people were saying all these horrible things about it without it coming out yet, some people were talking about it before the trailers came out, with the obnoxious actions of that, you\u2019ve got a choice of what you can believe: Believe in what you did or believe in what the people are saying. I appreciate the love that this show has been getting, but even if there wasn\u2019t love at the end of the day, we still made something very special. People are entitled to their own opinions, but I\u2019ve seen everybody\u2019s hard work, day in and day out, blood, sweat and tears. There was so much passion from everybody coming into this show and the fact that we could come together and just take in everything that we\u2019ve made, it all turned out beautifully.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe\u2019re sad because it looks like Natalie has gone away. Do you envision an Ironheart world in which we get more Natalie?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI hope that we get more Natalie. There\u2019s more for me to explore about her. I know for sure that five months or so was not enough. Selfishly, I want Natalie back. But we will see. I haven\u2019t heard anything, so y\u2019all just might find out at the same time I do.<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/p>\n

\n\tAll six episodes of Ironheart are now streaming on Disney+.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[This story contains spoilers from the Ironheart finale.] It\u2019s hard to forget Lyric Ross as Deja in This…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":36345,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[691,738,4094,10953,158,29715,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-36344","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-ironheart","11":"tag-marvel-studios","12":"tag-technology","13":"tag-this-is-us","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114791468427754881","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}