During an interview with Collider, actress Alexandra Shipp talked about X-Men: Apocalypse, Storm, and the meeting between her character and the movie's big baddie.
First of all, we should mention that her character stays truer to the comic book character than the Halle Berry version did, starting from her origins forward. Shipp said that this new Storm was raised on the streets of Cairo after her parents died in a plane crash.
Shipp says that Storm has no concept of the full extent of her own powers. Furthermore, her character doesn't know a thing about the X-Men. Like everybody else on the planet, all she knows is that Mystique saved the president from an evil mutant. But this information isn't anything that could show her a path, since Storm has always been surrounded by mutants trying to survive and who can be seen, basically, as being bad. In a sense, she doesn't know that Mystique is actually good and the episode in which she saves a man in power can be disregarded as unessential for her upbringing.
Shipp also said that her Storm is compelled by her own history to join Apocalypse. According to the actress, mutants with godly levels of power, who are forced to live on the streets because they cannot adapt to society (or because they are not accepted), are exactly the kind of beings who are sought out by the villain. He uses their weaknesses to lure them in.
And this doesn't mean that these mutants are somehow tricked into following Apocalypse. According to Shipp, they know that only Apocalypse can bring them what they want - a sense of belonging.
The actress described the first meeting between Apocalypse and her character:
[You] see me in Cairo, and he's speaking whatever ancient language, because he's just woken up, and I'm speaking Arabic. I'm trying to communicate with him, and then he has this moment where he figures out where he is, what's happened, what date it is, and he"¦Apocalypse doesn't need to say much. All he has to do is just be like, "I'm here, I'm what you've been looking for". And you just feel it right in your gut, and you're like, "Right, you are exactly what I've been looking for. You are exactly what I need right now." I think that he can see that, and he could also see the power. I feel like when you're the most powerful, you're also the most self-conscious about it. We kind of find each other. As though the crowd, it all parts, and I see his blue face. Then we’re kind of just like, "Ah." There is a moment.
Basically, Apocalypse needs the horsemen just as much as the horsemen need him. In a way, Shipp says, the relationship between the four and Apocalypse is not at all one of subordination. Instead, it is a codependency, a symbiosis in which everybody involved receives what is needed.
The actress also said that she will use a Kenyan accent, and there will be some scenes in which she will speak Arabic.
