It sounds like there’s at least one area where the sequel Kingsman: The Golden Circle will not disappoint. Director Matthew Vaughn’s spy thriller Kingsman: The Secret Service was a delightful twist on a familiar formula when it hit theaters, and one of the ways in which it set itself apart was its villain, played by Samuel L. Jackson. His motivation, unlike most baddies, proved to be wholly unique: he wanted to stop climate change. That’s a good thing! But his solution to stopping climate change was to render the human species nearly extinct. That’s a bad thing!

So for The Golden Circle, Vaughn and co-writer Jane Goldman knew they had to come up with another unique villain, and it sounds like they have. Speaking with EW, Vaughn finally revealed some details about Julianne Moore’s mysterious baddie, who he describes as “Martha Stewart on crack” and who goes by the name Poppy:

“For this film, I needed a performer who could fill the shoes of Sam Jackson without any sense of intimidation. And someone who could make this character pretty insane but at the same time real. And though Kingsman is hopefully a big popcorn film, I love to put fantastic, brilliant, Oscar-winning talent like Julianne Moore into crazy environments. That’s when we get magic happening.”

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Image via 20th Century Fox

So what’s her game? Poppy is a ruthless entrepreneur who works out of a ridiculous re-creation of 1950s Main Street deep in the jungle, where she peddles drugs. She longs to bring back her beloved Americana, and just as with Jackson’s character, her thinking is not entirely insane—she wants to legalize drugs:

“She’s taken over the global drug business and wants to be on the Forbes list… She has a speech where she goes, ‘Sugar is 10 times more addictive than cocaine. It causes more death and misery in America. Yet one is legal. Peddle that shit and you’re in the Forbes 500. Peddle coke and you’re in jail. What the fuck!’ So the points she’s making are not insane.”

As you can see in the first-look images provided by EW, we’re in for a really colorful, unique kind of villain lair, and I can’t wait to see Moore in action when the film hits theaters on September 22nd.

 

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Image via 20th Century Fox

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