"Ghostbusters: Afterlife" director Jason Reitman revealed to The Wrap that he's known Olivia Wilde for a long time, and the two have been meaning to work together for a while. So when the time came to cast Gozer, Reitman knew precisely who he wanted to fill those shoes. He stated, "I reached out to her like, 'Hey, you wanna be Gozer?' I just texted her, and she was down from the word 'go'." As it turns out, Wilde had a previous connection to the "Ghostbusters" franchise. She played Princess Inanna in "Year One," which was the final film directed by original Ghostbuster Harold Ramis.
But no matter what role she's in, Wilde remains a consummate professional, with Reitman going on to note how she was fully ready to sit in a chair to have prosthetics applied for her small role. He explained, "It's not a fun day because you have to show up at the crack of dawn and be covered in prosthetics and makeup and have weird contact lenses put in your eyes." Wilde was game from the start, and Gozer was such an intricate role that it actually required several performers to put together.
In addition to Wilde playing the entity, dancer Emma Portner provided some of Gozer's scenes whenever "unusual body language" was called for. On top of that, Shohreh Aghdashloo provided the voice of the character. It all led to a thrilling antagonist to close out "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" and set the bar high for the sequel.
