Portman has a reputation for playing small and petite characters, but has loved seeing the world react to her muscular new shape. “To have this reaction and be seen as big, you realize, ‘Oh, this must be so different, to walk through the world like this,'” Portman said. “When you’re small — and also, I think, because I started as a kid — a lot of times I feel young or little or, like, a pat-on-the-head kind of person. And I present myself that way, too, because of that.” As the Mighty Thor, however, Portman is able to experience what it’s like to be larger than life. Jane’s Mighty Thor is billed as standing six feet tall, which meant Waititi and the crew had to find ways to cheat Portman’s height.

“We’d rehearse the scene, they’d see the path, and then they’d build a path that was like one foot off the ground or whatever, and I would just walk on that,” Portman said. Thompson laughed at the sentiment, recalling that her platform was called a “deck” on set, but due to the cast’s variety of accents, sometimes “deck” would sound like a similar four-letter word. “Because we’re all children,” Thompson joked. Portman’s height deck became one of the biggest running jokes during production, with Portman noting that her co-stars would have to modify their blocking to account for the platform: “They’d all have to navigate my deck!”

“Thor: Love and Thunder” is now in theaters.