Back when Jon Favreau was mounting a production of Iron Man, or Kenneth Branagh was figuring out how to do Thor on the big screen, a part in a Marvel Studios movie probably felt like “the next gig.” These are starving artists, after all, and comic book movies back in those days weren’t genre-defining event pictures, like they are now. Today, you would assume that a new Marvel role comes with the weight of expectations, so when I had an opportunity to interview Wyatt Russell, Erin Kellyman and Amy Aquino about their casting in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, they opened up about that pressure. Watch their answers above.
Erin Kellyman plays a mysterious figure named Karli Morganthau, the super-soldiered leader of the anti-patriotism Flag Smashers who may or may not be a bad guy. When I asked her if she viewed Falcon and the Winter Soldier as just another gig, she quickly confessed:
Oh, there’s a weight. (laughs) There is a weight. I think that whenever you are heading into a franchise that is so big and has so many followers and fans, there’s always that part of it that is very… you know that people are very protective over their show. And rightfully so. It’s been around for so many years. So there’s always a level of nerves when you come in, and being the newbie. But people have been quite nice to me personally. The messages that I have been getting are quite nice. I don’t know about anything beyond my DMs, but people have been quite friendly!
Chalk The Falcon and the Winter Soldier co-star Amy Aquino as another one who came to the project with the burden of expectations. In the show, Aquino plays Dr.Christina Raynor, the therapist trying to untangle Sam (Anthony Mackie) and Bucky’s (Sebastian Stan) relationship. She tells CinemaBlend:
Oh, it is so not ‘just the next gig.’ Obviously this is my first foray into the Marvel Universe. I didn’t even know what the Marvel Universe meant… That was the first moment when I went, ‘Oh this is a really big thing.’ And all the secrecy around the scripts. I mean, you don’t have to worry about spoiler alerts with me because I have no idea. That doesn’t get shared with you unless you are taking part in it. But it was huge, and I don’t usually get freaked out by a new job, but this one, it did scare me some.
The only one in the Falcon and the Winter Soldier cast who took the opposite approach to this inquiry was Wyatt Russell. The current Captain America took a very practical approach to our question, perhaps in an effort to distance himself from Cap’s legacy, by stating:
It’s just the next gig for me, in that you just go do the best you can with what you have, always. It doesn’t matter if you are doing it on a $2 million indie movie, or a $500,000 indie movie, or a $400 million Marvel show. It doesn’t matter. It’s the same camera, it’s the same actors. It’s the same thing.
He’s right. And yet, I feel like anyone adding to the legacy of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has to feel special on some level. Maybe not. Episode three of the debut season of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is streaming now on Disney+. Be sure to bookmark our guide to upcoming Marvel TV shows to learn what’s next from the house that Kevin Feige built.
