Stars of ‘WandaVision,’ ‘Falcon and The Winter Soldier’ and ‘Loki’ Chat About All Things Marvel

hello and welcome to day two of varieties tv fast presented by amazon advertising i'm adam b very senior entertainment writer and today for the first time we have assembled the stars of marvel studios first three series for disney plus and hiddleston is he here is time here did they kick time off oh already already we're off to the races here from from one division we have elizabeth olsen and paul bettany from the falcon and the winter soldier as you've already seen we have anthony mackey and sebastian stan and from loki we have tom hiddleston welcome to all of you thank you for all for being here um you know as as we were all kind of signing in you guys were already off to the races talking to each other but i i kind of want to get a sense of uh before we dive into your shows and the marvel experience other than this virtual discussion today how often have the five of you like been in the same room together to interact with each other oh always we live together like the monkeys did yeah we live together and we write songs and everything has been great the whole way through the pandemic i do feel like there's often times when we are all on on set together in a tent no but it's been right i guess it's been like two years years yeah two three years yeah three last time i saw you guys when we were when we did the when we did the big end game scene yeah so like three years ago 2018. i wasn't in i wasn't that safe tom wasn't right [Laughter] no i saw tom do it yeah i i think this is the first time adam that the these the five of us have been in in um these specific five have been in the same yeah virtually not there's lots of lots of wires that go lots of connections in different directions but um this is an exclusive i think of this uh whether or not you choose to believe paul and his um his monkeys i prefer that version we were like i had in my head we were making banana grit banana bread together during the pandemic and like growing kale like everybody else we're definitely not growing kale just stop it oh my god leaf no more kale talk i just love blueberries this morning uh so so with each of your each of your shows um all of you have been very important supporting characters in the marvel films but now you were all at the top of the call sheet headlining your own shows uh i'll start with lizzy uh and i'm going to call you lizzy because you told me in a previous interview i could call it lizzie um uh um uh lizzy what was that experience like for you to go from being you know having your specific scenes in your movies to being there every day top the call sheet lead of the show um i think i think the the first thought of it was uh felt like intimidating because more specifically that we were moving these larger than life characters onto a television screen and i think that idea freaked me out and then once that was the initial feeling but once i spoke with jack shafer our show runner and creator i guess yeah showrunner i feel like we did use those proper terms in our in our but she head writer jack really understood my character and her history specifically with paul and her own experience in um just like all of the marvel movies and i in my brain just because i was trying to grasp at anything was creating these inner arcs in between movies just to hold on to something and um she she saw like she pulled all those thoughts out of my brain and put them on the screen and are on the page and so it was it was a nice opportunity paul and i were actually very excited to lead our show and kind of set a tone of just like fun respect kindness and uh discipline and i think it made it huh let's see punctuality no one was ever late that is true but that is i mean that's what you get when you get a you know when you when you do get to lead in a way you you get a set the standard for everyone and um we had a really great time making our show and there was a lot of collaboration and um it was chaos because you're going from a movie that's like a page and a half a day to seven pages a day it was um it was really exhausting but i i know we we had great leadership and um not talking about us but we had other you know great leaders with matt chapman our director and um jack schaefer and so it was um it was a night it was a great opportunity and you got to work with cat dennings oh yes mackie i did uh anthony though i gather that everyone who knows who calls me mackie but um i will call you anthony anthony uh when you were first pitched the idea of taking falcon to disney plus how did what was your reaction uh i was i was horrified it's funny because when i went to l.a i bumped into i i didn't know who what where what was going on and you know all i know is i got called to la to have a meeting so i walk into the hotel come in the lobby and i bump into sebastian i'm like what are you doing here what are you doing here it's like you have a meeting yep you have a meeting yep okay so i had an idea of what was cooking but i didn't think it was gonna be a tv show and you know i was i would say i was very afraid um and very uh disappointed when i heard it was gonna be a tv show because i didn't think that we could take the scope of what we had just done in in all these movies and then put it on tv and it would work and i didn't want to be like the first failed entity of marvel like you have all this amazing stuff and then this one thing sucks and it just happens to be me so because i didn't know about the other shows i just when i heard they were putting like us on tv i was like yo you're literally sending me and sebastian out to pasture like two old cows you know why why are we like we shouldn't there's no way you can take the even like he's he's being way too modest about it by the way after being 17 oscar nominated movies i guess like you know he's gonna have that no way man no i was i was i was i was mortified and um i thought it took it it yeah if it took kari and uh malcolm and malcolm yeah and once i heard the two of them were on i was like oh well you know kevin feige promised me that he wasn't going to dumb down the uh the culture that of the the marvel franchise that they've created because you know if it's just like you know it was it was it was going to be smaller i thought it was going to be like you know batman and robin the original one where it was like pow you know i mean i would that would be kind of fun to see in a marvel context too but um you know i i think that it it's it sounds like that once you got going you both sort of got a sense of oh no this is still going to be at the at the scope of the movies right yeah and it was all the same people you know and everybody can attest to this you know when you do these when you become a part of the marvel franchise it's almost like uh you know summer camp so when you show up to set is everybody and you never miss a beat and you know everybody some people have kids some people bought a car some people did this so it's like you know you go back to seeing all your same friends over and over and i think that speaks a lot to the culture that lizzie was talking about you're at work with your friends so of course you you're you're looking forward to going to work and having a good time and you know bumping into lizzy in a parking lot and tormenting her set and stuff like that because it's fun you know uh tom you know i i understand that for you you even taught like a loki 101 course to the the creative leaders of your we were not invited we were everybody was talking about it tom hiddleston gave a six-hour symposium about how we were invited that we were not invited we were all on the line yeah yes yes we were all on the line sebastian and i they made us work they they scheduled one of our biggest scenes so we could not sneak out and and crash the tom hiddleston symposium did you have a laser pointer or like he gave a six-hour symposium about loki go yes tom we're listening there wasn't there was a white board well let me let me go back let me go back to the beginning let me go back here so um there was a kind of like see i i thought our show hasn't has an aired yet so i have to be careful with what i say now but um so initially when kevin feige and louis de esposito called me about this uh they were very excited and and it was um around the spring of 2018 which was when infinity war was being released into the world and they said we know we're gonna disney are going to create this streaming platform and they have you know we're very excited to present ideas to them and loki is one of them in amongst one division [ __ ] with the soldiers i was like okay and then i was excited but my first question was how do we do that infinity war was just about to come out and um the opening three minutes of that film felt extremely final and you die and i said well what how do we do that because jose was so um uh kind and generous but also sort of conclusive about the way that scene was written i think even joshua and his thanos says no resurrections this time and um and then cut to uh so sorry so tom when when you said how can we do this did you know yet what was going to happen in endgame or did or did they even say to you well we have a plan we just can't tell you yet did they give you any sense of like how they're gonna do it basically there were like different there were moments where different uh people on the production team had lots of different questions about different things from different films different movies and what the six movies i made in the mcu they were like why does this costume change to this and what happened here and and what was the thinking behind why did this thing end up like that and why do you use your knives like this in one film and your knives like this another one and um because again i have to be careful of spoilers i know that the that you'll be respectful of the need um with two weeks to go uh so they were basically the show the show is about lots lots of the shows about lots of things but it's probably there's an element of it being a kind of it's about identity in the way that one division maybe is about grief digging into lots of different aspects of loki and um this you know the shape shifter who is constantly changing shape so what's his authentic shape does he have one and um there's so many i was fielding lots of questions from the production team and then six hours time six hours it came out in uh it wasn't like it wasn't six it can't symposium six hours i mean okay like two hours like an hour with a q a tom q a there was a q a anyway so i said to you sorry love you sorry i said to kate herron our director i said would it be helpful if i gave everybody all the information at the same time and um and kate and kevin wright our producer was like that's a brilliant idea so it became and and i and i shamefully it then became a kind of low-key lecture um and uh and i uh yes it was it was it was it's it's i'm full of crush which i've crossed for shame and embarrassment that this thing is is even that has even happened and and uh is now out in the world but you know i'm if you guys you know want the kind of cliff notes on it i can probably tighten them up send you a copy yes you really want it i think it's born out of real fear that i i literally i'm not sure i could hold a 30 minute uh discussion that's actually what it's like oh my god tom hiddleston is so prepared could you hold a a two-hour symposium about uh the ship of ephesus the ship of theseus no i no i couldn't i just i just did what i always do which is learn the lines honk for the best wing for the fence baby and it's slightly intimidating because i was playing opposite my uh my stunt guy and he was kind of better than me this happened to me once before when i had a stand-in you know a camera standing it was for lighting and he would do things and i go jesus that's a good idea and it was really the whole thing was you know i found myself robbing ideas off the understanding terrible anyway but yeah we digress hey adam take it away let's yes so tom brought up a very good point when he asked to be careful uh a conscious of uh spoilers which is all of you have in various times in your careers within marvel had to navigate uh people like me asking you questions that you actually can't answer and so i i want to know if you all have sort of go-to ways of avoiding answering direct questions that are sort of spoiler driven because you all have to protect the the storytelling that marvel is has worked so hard to to uh to maintain and and and keep everybody surprised like for example you know tom it sounds like you didn't even know that that loki was going to sort of be resurrected and end game until much later like so do they keep things from you how do you navigate all of that no actually i did the the biggest secret i kept for a long time was was that scene in infinity war so i remember i remember going in to meet kevin and lou before we started filming ragnarok and they were kind of talking me through there was before they sent the script they were kind of talking me through the story and uh taika i think wasn't in uh town at that time so i just talked it through with them and and at the end of that meeting they were sort of describing what happens with with thor and and what chris was going to do and and and the arrival of heller played by kate blanchett and how uh hulk and ruffalo is going to be on this alien planet at the other end of the universe with jeff goldblum as the grand master and i thought this is great and then where it was going to end and then at the end of that meeting joe and anthony rousseau came in and they said we're working on the next avengers film and the only this only completed scene we've locked is the opening and then they told me what happened in it and um and so i went to i then carried that around so knowing that was going to happen for i guess um two years maybe two and a half years um and um you just i don't know how you guys feel you just kind of change the subject and go i can't tell you anything you'll have to wait and see um i know some people feel they have to tell someone otherwise they'll tell everyone how do you guys feel about it tell everyone in my personal life and i tell no one in the press you trust the people in your personal life yeah i trust with things that happen in my life that don't get out in the press so yes i'm with marvel news god help you if you don't this is jesus revealing about you [Laughter] yeah we have people in our personal life that we trust yeah no i don't think that guys i feel like sebastian would be really good at answering this question what how do you hear answering questions sebastian absolutely not i i i'm very worried about any trusting whatsoever i i before this uh variety call i i i had a conversation with anthony where i was like i just want to know that you'll be on this car i can't be alone i like i have like i think i have an attachment issue now to him like i can't even like do this this is why why am i not the little bro how do you say lizzy i might be the little brother how about that i think you're the big brother and sebastian likes to let his big brother talk talk so that he can just oh lizzy i'm so happy you're like like i'm not i'm not saying anything else i'm not like putting either of you down by the way oh there she is and just like saying how i see it lizzie i'm just saying if you ever want to meet an aroma cafe in the valley i mean [Laughter] is this where the therapy came from in right i'm just seeing it right in life i'm seeing it live happening [Laughter] oh that's so bad uh paul um i i'm gonna pivot to you for a second um uh your character vision has arguably evolved well the part that you've played in the mcu has evolved i can't even i don't even know if it's necessarily like really the same character entirely yeah he started off as a desktop yeah he started off as a voice he started off as a pc his [ __ ] he is he started off as a gateway 700. and then you and then you became and then you became vision and and now you know a spoiler for the end of wanda vision there's another version of vision now that's out there in the mcu you know god knows when we'll see that again but could you talk about you know for for you how that's been to have this your time in the mcu just continually perpetuate and sort of start over again and every time you think it's over then they tell you it's not what that what that has been like for you well last time it was pretty great because uh you know my contract was up and i'd just been twice [Laughter] then i got a call from uh from kevin feige and you know when the possible your contracts are that's why i went to my wife when it did i don't know i think it's over so i went in there and because i'm british i was like you know i don't want anybody to feel bad so i just went in full on like it's been a great ride i love you guys feelings please and um you're not firing me well we're gonna we're gonna put yeah it's been um it's been a it's been a fun ride i think i was concerned about how on um one division i've been being the vision and i think at the core of the vision you know because tony stark he's jarvis and then i just you know you know through a bit of um of uh you know some sort of 1950s comedy into it and it seemed to it seemed to hold on if you if the center of vision is decency you know it can kind of absorb some other mothership so that's what i did sebastian when when when bucky fell off of that train when bucky fell off of that train in captain america the the first avenger did you know that he would be that he was going to be coming back at that point did you know that then no no they were at first they were going to have this like green sleeved arm and i was like oh perfect and then they were like you know what we don't know so then they gave me the real arm back and yeah i don't know not not not much after that so when did you find out that that he was going to be coming back for for captain america at the winter summer a friend of mine called me and uh and said hey hey bro i i'm at the san diego comic-con and and you're in the title of the next film and i was like oh cool seriously they didn't i don't know we we seem to find these things out like in weird ways i guess i don't know so did you you know you've been playing this role now for off and on for 10 years as as has tom um uh you know how how has it changed your life well you know uh tom how's it changed your life i i mean i'm just i'm just you know you're just trying to kind of like still have some sort of a life i guess without someone commenting on it it's it's like this it's like if i move this piece of paper from left to right someone's gonna have something to say about it and i i just think that's really funny you just launched you just launched like three blog posts about what that means and professionally speaking how is it how is it affected for all of you how has being part of the mcu uh changed the trajectories of the kinds of projects you can do outside of the mcu the amount of commitment that you have to make with your time within the mcu how has that affected your your lives professionally um i'll answer this genuinely and not make a joke about it i um i i what it allows for all of us is that we all have um a number sign above our heads when we make independent films and whether or not we can sell them internationally to help get financing i want to do that it does allow us to be able to do that um so i i think that's a great benefit to being a part of such a huge international franchise genuine way to go genuine i i i love these films i have to say and i have been in less of them than i think everybody else as it on the zoom and and um i i uh i don't want to embarrass you paul with sincerity but i remember going to see um the first iron man in when i was i can't remember i was doing a tv job for the bbc and i was working abroad and went to the local cinema and i came back i was like that was amazing that's an amazing movie and everyone in it did amazing work and um and and the idea that i would ever get to be in anything like that felt so remote at that time for me i didn't know how on earth i would be able to get you know i said wow this is great and i and i and i was poor i was thinking you know maybe you do get mad love for jarvis but like jarvis is great and that's why you've evolved into the vision and that's why you're still here um and uh it's been life-changing because these films mean so much to so many people and and that is a privilege i mean yeah that i think the way that that everyone felt at the end of end game when when when those when those battles happened and the response that that was sort of heard in the in the theaters it's the thing that i keep thinking about and when i think about going back to theaters post pandemic is sort of recapturing that kind of experience again um and you know part of that is the fan interaction the experience that you guys all have with the people who love marvel so much and i didn't know if any of you had any you know favorite interactions or memorable interactions you've had with marvel fans that you might want to share well do you know what i'll say a quick thing i was doing a play in london um when end game opened and i think i was the only one the only people who wasn't there at the big release in los angeles and um two very old friends uh picked me up from the stage door one night and they pre they booked some tickets to a midnight screening and i went and i went dressed in like a scarf and sat and sat in in a cinema in london and watched it with the first crowd and that's when i remember that's when i really realized like what an extraordinary um event these films are when they come out like it wasn't i wasn't in it in an industry it wasn't an audience full of people from our industry it was an audience of of you know the real audience and it was such a delight to be uh kind of in amongst it um and and to feel their responses and and to hear them is so vocal so emotional so yeah it was that was a really fun experience to just be back in touch with the real thing i guess yeah i think i think tom's right in that you you don't you don't have to look at it through the sort of prism of what what being in marvel the marvel franchise can do for you but rather what you can do for the marvel franchise no it just began to sound like that but that's what it meant what i meant was one division for instance was just on its own one of the most creative and fun experiences of my career and so i don't even think about it in the context of everything else it is it is what it is and there you're working with the greatest technicians in the world you know um and and like anthony says you're going to see all your friends again it's it's it's been it's been such a it's been such a great time and um and really really creative and imaginative song i love it um i want to talk a bit a little about the world building in the mcu um you know and you know one of the things that's sort of great about about the way marvel operates is that each sort of movie feels sort of unique unto itself as its own kind of thing but it's also part of this larger cohesive storytelling universe that was as i think appears especially true with these shows each these shows each of these shows are very different from the other um so you know how you know these are things that you know we we rarely get to sort of talk about because we're so focused on like that's you know the the grand spectacle of it all but um like the props the the the sets the world building could you talk about for you guys as actors what it's like to step onto those and and have that help your performance and help you sort of believe that you have these these incredible powers or these incredible abilities um you know and and sell that story lizzie why don't you go first oh i was just thinking about um how important my wigs are to me when you just told me i really i think my the wigs that i put on um whether it was for the 50s or the 70s or scarlet witch wig you have like 14 wigs um it it totally it totally puts me in a a funny mood and i love it and it's something that once i'm out of that chair i'm like i feel like i have my invisible cape on and like i'm gone and i don't mean it in any kind of um like a methody way just it really it really makes me feel like for the 50s you know you just everything you just want to walk different you want to talk different um we were we all felt that way in the hair and makeup trailer all the time for doing our stupid vocal warm-ups to get our voices to have the right inflection for these time periods and and so then so you so yes there's that part of the world building and then with with specifically with lawn division it was kind of incredible to watch our production design team create this this this nuclear home that shifted based on whatever reference we were we were point we were um you know giving an homage to and whether it was the the multi-cam set of the dick van dyke show or the brady bunch we had these like we had a tree we had a plant that grew every single episode like no one would know but like we got so much joy knowing that that plant was growing every decade and then in the pan ultimate episode it was like dead it was like a dead tree and i just i just love those details and it and it really makes us feel like a piece of the fabric of the set and oh god not not to mention our exteriors and like all the nights all our entire crew were doing to paint the picket fences paint the houses different colors get different flowers out i mean it was it was really remarkable what paul and i got to see our crew build it was um really inspiring and you know everyone's working so hard so you need to work that hard you need to work harder and everyone's just lifting each other up it's really uh it's uh you're working with the greatest craftsmen and and women and it's um it makes you be better anthony um along the lines of what of what lizzie was talking about though you know for falcon in the winter soldier you were in a lot of different locations you were supposed to be in you know you know there was a brand new city or country within the mcu madripour that was introduced um but you know you obviously can't especially since part of your show was shot during the pandemic you can't necessarily travel to all these places so how did you um what was it like for you to have this sort of international show and have that part be part of what you were doing with the falcon in the winter soldier um you know it was when when the first when i first read the script i thought it was going to be one of those amazing experiences where we were going to be traveling to seven different countries and doing all this stuff and you know sebastian was gonna hurt his toe time trying to be tom cruise and you know all this stuff was going to be amazing and then they were like you know atlanta and puerto rico and i was like sweet and then the earthquakes in puerto rico happened then they were like atlanta and tba so it it kind of our show was interesting because it really gave a wide spectrum of what this uh world for the falcon and the winter soldier was going to be what's the idea of everything and all these characters they were introducing into um the universe but at the same time everything was kind of a [ __ ] in the armor everything that happened kind of was was a punch in the gut you know from us not being able to know our location from the pandemic from the earthquakes from there were so many things that were like set in our path that were speed bumps um you know so it was it was it was it was really a group effort with cast and crew to keep the morale up and every location and every opportunity and you know rewrites and everything to really make the show uh work the way it did i think the best thing that happened to us uh that was that we were taking out the first slot and put in the second slot because i feel like one division was so amazing because it really set the vocabulary for what marvel was going to do in the streaming universe you know and when you saw that show how unique it was how different it was how beautiful it was how the performances were so great and how it still stood the test of the cinematic universe it kind of made the audience fall in line to the new scope of what marvel was gonna be um so thank you paul and lizzy um but it was all of these shows every single time was a team effort and you know from the builders from the riggers from the lighters from the you know writers every single uh show kind of worked its magic in its own way we'll see about low-key we had we had the best crew of all time we had the best crew of all time well we had the crew that didn't sit through a symposium [Laughter] well the thing about that the thing we um i guess about two-thirds of loki was made after the lockdown and so i just if i had any chance to publicly salute those guys because coming back we did six weeks of loki and then pandemic hit shut down we came back uh five months later four and a half months later as i think tom can i ask you a question about loki yeah do you get to improvise do you do do you like are you like do you get to be like do you get to go off at all or no or is it pretty scripted like how or did you did you find that in there um yeah we found we found i mean it's like always i feel like with every experience i've had with marvel it's like a it's a mixture of the two nobody there's there's something written there's a script and you start there and then but it can spin off and change and and um depending on the day depending on the scene depending on the complexity of the setups and the shots and you're like well you know we've kind of planned for this wire gag and you know there's a map for you but if you do something else we don't know if you're going to hit them you know you kind of can you hit the map because we need you to do that and otherwise everyone's in trouble um but uh there was definitely definitely room to play and to to be inventive um i mean it sounds the same as like when we were on set and i had to remind anthony that daniel bruhl was in the scene i was like anthony you know daniel is in the scene too right oh sorry but like yeah i guess there's a collaboration aspect of this whole thing you know as you go i don't know and and you know we uh owen wilson who sadly isn't is an honor yes is so is is so inventive and so imaginative and so spontaneous he would just he would always bring new things and you know new things to the table and um so yeah but but then i feel like it's always my experience inside working with marvel studios has been like that there's always been an encouragement to and that comes from kevin feige wouldn't you agree like kevin kevin works from a place where if someone has a good idea let's try it yeah and that's the that's the way the way the studio works is is is if someone has a good idea it doesn't matter where where whoever has it there's no there's no hierarchy of good ideas if you have a good idea then pitch it and maybe it'll be in the thing and that's what i love about the studio is they're so fleet-footed and so dexterous like that they can go oh that's interesting let's let's try this um how many times during your shoot did you talk to kevin feige tom um a couple of times i mean because of the pandemic he was in touch about the shutdown and um so about six he's only asking because anthony was calling him every friday night i'll text him every other day okay maybe once every two weeks it wasn't everything every other day i'm sure he did oh is that true i was booking this trip to greece and i had to know how much i could spend you know but that would be amazing if you ask him that like kevin i'm just on the corner of 6th and 8th and i'm wondering i wish we could continue talking but that's all the time we have uh and this was a truly wonderful delightful marvelous conversation i'm sorry i regret even saying that um but thank you so much for for uh taking the time to talk with us and uh and all of our shows are available on disney plus please check them out uh to our attendees uh thank you for watching and please stay tuned for our next session thank you so much you

Channel: Variety

Views: 1,136,821

Rating: 4.9868407 out of 5

Keywords: Variety, Variety Studio

Id: VXnHZ-tdjp4

Length: 42min 50sec (2570 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 09 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/MrConor212]

Jesus Christ I loved this. Everyone just oozes charisma

[u/shopliftingbunny]

“And you got to work with Kat Dennings.” Ahaha. Anthony Mackie makes me crack up