Celebrities Who Manifested Their Dream Roles and Collaborations

Many celebrities have found success after speaking their dream casting opportunities into existence — all the details

Say it and it will happen. Although several stars have vocalized their preferences for certain roles, there are a lucky few who have managed to make those dreams a reality.

Simu Liu made headlines in 2019 when he was cast as Shang-Chi in Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. At the time, the actor recalled a past tweet of his that predicted the role he would soon get to play.

“Hey Marvel, great job with Cpt America and Thor. Now how about an Asian American hero,” he wrote in July 2014.

Looking back on the instance of social media manifestation, the stuntman said had no clue that a simple thought would lead to the role of a lifetime.

“I had absolutely no idea it was going to happen. It was kind of just a facetious thing that I tweeted,” Liu shared during an appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show in September 2021. “What’s happened in these next few years has been pretty incredible and pretty insane. So I am just pinching myself every day, to be honest.”

Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige also weighed in on the 2014 post, admitting that he had only seen it after the Kim’s Convenience alum was already chosen.

“Along with our casting director Sarah Finn, [we] scoured the earth looking for Shang-Chi. [Simu] tweeted, which we found out after he was cast, but he had an amazing audition, he had an amazing reel, did some great work up on in Canada,” Feige explained at the movie’s red carpet premiere in September 2021. “And just brought as you will find soon a relatability to it that all Marvel heroes need but he can also achieve, we believe, that sort of iconic status to stand within the pantheon of Marvel heroes.”

Liu isn’t the only superhero who’s managed to manifest success. Dove Cameron was also in for a surprise when she was offered the role of Bubbles in the live-action Powerpuff Girls series.

“The second [the show] was announced on Twitter, I screenshoted it and sent it to [my team]. I was like, ‘Guys, I just need to audition.’ I don’t even care if they don’t see me for the role, I just need to audition,” Cameron revealed to PopSugar in March 2021 about her journey to score the lead role.

At the time, the Descendants star explained that she was excited to bring the animated character to life after falling in love with the cartoon series, which aired from 1998 until 2005.

“As a fan, I was reading the script and I was like, ‘Oh, that would be how these girls would grow up. Oh, that would be psychologically what would happen. Oh, that figures in the relationship with the professor.’ It makes sense,” she noted. “There’s a lot of confusion, but we’re not playing 7-year-olds. It’s not a cartoon. They are real people. This is very much real-life problems and girls with trauma [about] what happens if you grow up in the spotlight and you are international superheroes, but you’re real people.”

Two months later, the CW’s CEO Mark Pedowitz confirmed that the pilot would be reshot. Cameron, who remained attached to the project, admitted that she was looking forward to bringing a different approach to the revamped episode.

“I’m actually very excited at the thought of it because I was texting the girls and we’re like, ‘Oh. Well, now we know what we’re doing. What an amazing thing,'” she told Entertainment Tonight in June 2021. “You never get to do that as an actor, go back and be like, ‘What would I have done differently?'”

Scroll down to see other stars who got their dream roles and collaborations after speaking it into the universe: