Dominique Thorne and her dad were on a private ATV tour and had just stopped to walk through a beautiful paper tree forest near jasmine rice paddies where “you could smell the jasmine in the air,” she says. Post-stroll, Thorne approached the vehicle and was just about to put on her helmet when their local guide gasped.
“He’s like, ‘Oh my God, I know her!’” she says. “My dad started to laugh and said, ‘You don’t know her.’” Suddenly, she continues, the man crossed his arms in front of his chest to signal “Wakanda Forever” and made an exclamation that echoed all the way to Hollywood: “It’s Riri!!!”
Now that force of nature is getting her very own TV adventure. In Ironheart, premiering June 24 on Disney+, Thorne reprises her role as Riri Williams, an MIT student with incredible abilities, thanks to a powerful Iron Man–like suit that she crafted in her garage.
Indeed, as Marvel fans from all corners of the world recall — via the 2022 blockbuster Black Panther: Wakanda Forever — Riri plays an instrumental role in preserving the mystical African kingdom of Wakanda.
For the six-episode series, she says, “We’re peeling back all those stakes and leaning in to ask, ‘Who is she on a regular Tuesday?’” The answer: an engineering prodigy stuck in a creative rut post–Wakanda internship. Bored with classes, she’s back in her hometown of Chicago and focusing all her energy on building something unparalleled. To accomplish that, she’s going to need money.
As seen in footage presented at the D23 Expo in 2024, Parker Robbins (Anthony Ramos) soon enters the picture. The zealous and dynamic Puerto Rican — that’s Ramos’s description — wears a hood that gives him access to the dark arts, setting up a clash between him and the scientifically minded Riri.
The cast is rounded out by Alden Ehrenreich (Brave New World) as tech collector Joe McGillicuddy; Lyric Ross (This Is Us) and Matthew Elam (Fargo) as Riri’s friends Natalie and Xavier; Anji White (Fargo) as Riri’s mom; Manny Montana (Good Girls) as Cousin John; and Shea Couleé (RuPaul’s Drag Race) as Parker’s associate, Slug.
The ensemble is strong, and so is the suit itself: It soars through the air and provides extra strength, along with the ability to fire blasts, grenades and an electric discharge.
“Riri is a genius inventor like [Iron Man’s] Tony Stark, but she’s no billionaire and has none of the same access to power,” explains executive producer and writer Chinaka Hodge. “She’s important because she represents an unflinching, unforgettable, woman-forward future.” Black Panther director Ryan Coogler is an executive producer, and Samantha Bailey (Dear White People) and Angela Barnes (Blindspotting) each directed three episodes.
The two versatile actors leading the charge don’t need magic to enhance their considerable talents. Thorne’s résumé includes prestigious films like 2018’s If Beale Street Could Talk and 2021’s Judas and the Black Messiah, as well as a degree from Cornell University.
Ramos parlayed his success from originating dual roles in Hamilton (John Laurens and Philip Hamilton) into the films A Star Is Born (2018), In the Heights (2021) and last summer’s Twisters. (He earned an Emmy nomination in 2021 for the theatrical recording of Hamilton, released on Disney+.) He’s currently Zooming in from a New York City studio, where he’s writing and recording a new album. “I need to keep that muscle fresh,” he says.
For what it’s worth, the two are also friendly, fun, open and charismatic. And when they talk about each other in separate interviews, they toss out compliments that don’t seem scripted.
Thorne says, “When someone like Anthony has your back, it definitely helps. I knew I was in a safe and supported space. Anyone who doesn’t absolutely love him is not human.”
Here’s Ramos on his leading lady: “I mean, I love Dom. She’s so dope, so smart. We’d finish days on the set, and I’d be like, ‘Yo, you killed it today!’ I’m really excited for people to see her in this role.”
Watch the exclusive interview with Dominique Thorne and Anthony Ramos during the emmy cover shoot.
True comic book aficionados will tell you that the Ironheart character debuted in Marvel’s Invincible Iron Man #7 in 2015 (though she wouldn’t don the armor until issue number nine). Thorne is proud to say she’s one of them.
“I remember being at Cornell and seeing that iconic artwork come across my screen for the first time,” she says. “It was super cool. She has this red shirt and big ’fro with a helmet under her arm. Just to see her referenced with that Iron Man suit was crazy, because Iron Man is where all those [MCU movies] began.”
It would take five years for Thorne to get the call to play the character — and another five years for Ironheart to make her TV debut. As Thorne tells it, she was stuck in Los Angeles in 2020 and worried about, well, everything.
She’d auditioned to play Shuri in Black Panther years earlier but lost out to Letitia Wright. She’d decided to pursue acting full time, but no roles were lined up, and her social sciences degree was going unused. And the world was shut down because of the pandemic.
“I was privileged to use that time as a mode of self-reflection to try and figure it all out,” she says. Ever the Type-A student, she made a vision board that included articles from Variety and mentions of the MCU and Coogler. A week later, she received a call from Black Panther producer Nate Moore.
That Black Panther audition? She’d left such a lasting impression that MCU executives wanted to create a series just for her, complete with a splashy introduction in the upcoming sequel to that 2018 Oscar-nominated smash.
He told me that they were looking to tell Riri’s story in a TV show, and he pitched me Ironheart,” she explains. “And they wanted me to play her! He even told me that Ryan was going to call me soon and walk me through the process. It felt like my vision board coming to life.”
Ramos appeared on the producers’ radar after playing a struggling health aide who goes toe-to-toe with his therapist on HBO’s In Treatment in 2021. “Chinaka and Ryan later told me that they saw me in it and were like, ‘We think he’s got the juice for this role,’” he says.
The actor still can’t believe he ended up on a Zoom chat with Hodge, Coogler, Marvel producer Zoie Nagelhout, and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige. And they pitched him! With a character dossier! And artwork! “I’ve been a Marvel fan forever and had seen every film, so it was a surreal moment,” he says. Not to mention a quick yes.
Ironheart started production in Atlanta in June 2022, almost immediately following the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever shoot. (It later moved to Chicago.) Thorne was just 24 at the time. “I had just worked with Ryan Coogler and [Black Panther stars] Angela Bassett, Letitia Wright, Danai Gurira, Winston Duke, and Lupita Nyong’o, so I could not have asked to have been better prepared at that moment,” Thorne says. “I did feel a sense of readiness and thinking, ‘Okay, we got this.’”
Ramos was impressed: "She had that presence of a leading lady. She’s so elegant and focused. She will walk into a room like, ‘Yo, I am number one on the call sheet.' And she backs it up with her talent.”
To read the rest of the story, pick up a copy of emmy magazine here.
This article originally appeared in its entirety in emmy magazine, issue #7, 2025, under the title "Sky High"
