A few months ago, billions of people
reappeared after five years away.
We need new heroes.
Ones suited for the times we're in.
Symbols are nothing
without the women and men that give them meaning.
And this thing, I don't know if there's ever been a greater symbol.
But it's more about the man who propped it up,
and he's gone.
So, today we honor Steve's legacy.
But also, we look to the future...
and the fights that await us there.
When Disney Plus was announced, we realized there was an opportunity
to interweave a cinematic universe with the television universe,
which had never been done before.
We knew if we could nail it, that's what would make this unique.
These characters can continue to be developed
in a way that we oftentimes don't have time to do in films
and then launch right back into that feature universe,
so that it's truly connected for the first time.
I think for Nate and I, it was very obvious
that The Falcon and the Winter Soldier would be
the perfect thing for this kind of format.
Look at you. All stealthy.
A little time in Wakanda and you come out White Panther.
- It's actually White Wolf. - Huh?
With, quite frankly,
not a ton of screen time throughout the movies,
they have become beloved.
What the hell is that?
Everyone's got a gimmick now.
And with the little bit of time they've interacted,
have sort of created this interesting buddy-cop tumultuous dynamic
that was so worth exploring.
Can you move your seat up?
No.
From the outset, the goal was to be very grounded.
Endgame was the battle of the titans
in a universe that was from a stellar place.
So, the swing of the bat here was to bring all of that
into a very relatable, very grounded character place,
But it was also embedded in a very real world.
This is a moment where you really could drop it all.
And we should feel like that's going through your mind.
- Mmm-hmm. - And therefore he needs to tell her...
You know, you're feeling, like, "I might have her now",
and so you can relax your body. And then boom.
So you kinda *er punch him, right?
Kari's been great. I think once you see this series,
you'll realize the emotional depth of these characters.
It's more of a drama than anything else.
Kari was able to make us less macho
and put machismo in the series
with all the fighting and special effects
and explosions and all that stuff.
Not exactly a bad*.
What?
But also show the emotional construct
that makes everyone an individual.
It was very important to me, and I think to everybody
to explore what it means to be a hero in today's world.
If in the past, in the MCU,
being a hero was very much related
to being a soldier and being a warrior,
the new hero is not that.
The new hero is really a first responder,
and so it was embedded in our journey for both characters.
Walker! Help me!
I think she just saw this
as two regular guys trying to find their way
and the main thing that stood out
to me was this new kind of way of shooting
where she would capture the characters' inner thoughts and so on.
And I thought that was really interesting.
So, now that you've stopped fighting, what do you want?
Peace.
That is utter bull...
As soon as you step
into the second floor of the Marvel building,
it really does make you feel like
you've stepped into something that's bigger than you.
Kevin and the rest of the Marvel team's mandate of,
"This cannot be TV",
it has to feel like a movie,
but the storytelling is inherently spread out.
I felt particularly equipped to do that.
I always say, "You break stories two ways".
You break 'em vertically, which is by each episode,
and then, you break 'em horizontally.
And that horizontal break
with the characters and their relationships,
every iteration of show we did,
that maintained and actually got stronger.
Enjoy your ride, Buck.
No, no, no, no, you can't call me that.
Why? That's what Steve called you.
Steve knew me longer and he had a plan.
When we were talking about the idea for the show,
Malcolm Spellman said the thing that resonated for him the most
with the end of Endgame was Sam's line,
"It feels like it's someone else's", and the notion of legacy.
How does it feel?
Like it's someone else's.
It isn't.
That line became sort of the backbone of Sam's arc.
And it was very clear to us
that if we're gonna tell a story over six hours,
we owe it to both that mantle and that symbol and that character
to dissect it from every angle
before he can arc to a place where he's evolved.
I'd felt like we would be dishonest to the fans and dishonest to,
just on a human level,
if we had this Black man just accept this symbol
without having real ambivalence about it.
And we knew that that was gonna be crucial to Sam's burden.
As a Black man in America,
to take on the stars and stripes and wear that proudly,
that's not something that Sam Wilson would do out of the box.
The notion of exploring what Blackness means in America
was kind of the hypothesis of the show,
and the notion of legacy was something
that both Sam and Bucky, in the show, explore.
Maybe this is something you or Steve will never understand.
But can you accept that I did what I thought was right?
When you think Captain America,
you think of a very specific brand of person.
There are so many different lines, so many different avenues,
so many realities that we have to live in every day
to be a successful Black man in our society.
You know, you can't be the same person every room you walk in.
It's a hard duality that you have to live in
and sometimes specifically, for somebody like Sam,
you have to ask yourself the question,
if that's something you're willing to deal with it.
- Hey, it's Black Falcon. What's up? - It's just Falcon, kid.
I mean, I think 2020 and COVID, if nothing else,
have proven how difficult it is to be a Black man in America.
It's not a new understanding or experience for anybody Black.
- Hey, is this guy bothering you? - No, he's not bothering me.
Do you know who this is?
Hey, these guys are Avengers.
Oh, God, I am so sorry, Mr. Wilson.
I didn't recognize you without the goggles.
With Sam picking up the shield,
it's such a representation of the country that we live in,
you know, there's a lot of trepidation
as far as, "How does a Black man
represent a country that does not represent him?"
We knew the journey that Sam was gonna go on
was going to be particularly rough for him
just because of the fact that he is a Black superhero, right?
Well, Anthony's backstory is rooted in Louisiana,
and we merged some of that
so that it could become really, really personal.
Then they start telling you what they've done with the characters,
and from that a whole life is born.
I told you specifically that the water pump
was not the problem, and yet, here you are.
In our defense, we were supposed to
have this done way before you woke up.
I don't come up to the sky to tell you how to barrel roll or whatever,
so you don't come down here and start messing around with things
- you clearly don't understand. - Wow...
You know, Adepero came in
and gave an amazing performance as my sister
and really gave that character a backbone
that kind of defined the entire history
of what this character, Sam Wilson,
really is from Winter Soldier till now.
- I thought you said you're a pilot. - I never said pilot.
You see how all of that
became this man from where he was from.
I've enjoyed learning who Sam Wilson truly is.
What would be the point of all the pain and sacrifice
if I wasn't willing to stand up and keep fightin'?
Sam's search for identity is about his future
and Bucky's search for identity is about his past.
And for Bucky, what we don't want to do
is abandon ten years of storytelling.
It was really important that we tackle those ten years of storytelling
and allow Bucky to process the events of his life
in a way that he hasn't had time to in the two hour stories
that he's been a part of in the past.
When we were making First Avenger,
there are always ideas of what could happen one day
if we were so lucky to make a sequel.
But the truth is, you're trying to get that movie right the first time.
You're not sure where any of this is gonna lead.
Sergeant Barnes, you are to be the new fist of HYDRA.
We'd be lying to say we didn't talk about where Bucky could go,
but we didn't know how far we could
take him and where he might end up.
And when you see Sebastian portraying the Winter Soldier,
which to us was even an extra level,
we knew there was something to explore there.
- What did I do? - Enough.
Oh, God. I knew this would happen.
Everything HYDRA put inside me is still there.
The relationship between Bucky and Steve
is so dramatic and so filled with pathos,
if you think about it,
the only person who had believed in Bucky in the MCU up to this point
was Steve Rogers.
Well, now Steve Rogers is gone.
Bucky feels unmoored in this series and is looking for his purpose.
That shield's the closest thing I've got left to a family.
So when you retired it,
it made me feel like I had nothing left.
What was challenging for me was the balance between
introducing the characters in a new way,
and yet making you still be aware of where they come from. You know?
I always think with these movies, every time I come back,
I'm always thinking,
"Okay, what if a fan sits down and watches
Captain America: First Avenger, Winter Soldier, Civil War,
The Avengers, now this,
are they gonna be able to see that same character throughout,
and then see that character evolve in new ways
but still be the same character?"
I am no longer the Winter Soldier.
I'm James Bucky Barnes.
And you're part of my efforts to make amends.
How does this character now function in the world?
What's his life going back to Brooklyn?
How is he meeting people? How is he interacting at coffee shops?
Is he dating? Is he thinking about another career?
Look, you've gotta nurture friendships.
I am the only person you have called all week.
That is so sad.
Bucky got this line in the show where he tells the shrink...
I had a little...
calm in Wakanda.
And other than that,
I just went from one fight to another for 90 years.
So the series is now his first chance to deal with that,
whether or not he really is a killer in his DNA,
whether or not he can be a hero, right?
Like, "Am I even cut out?"
There's always gonna be a dark side to this character
which I always loved,
and is, to me, what made him more interesting and complex.
And, you know, like, life, I feel like that doesn't go away.
It's still there in a way.
He's just learning how to deal with that a little more.
Bucky is very much trying to come to grips
with the things that he has done
that can't be undone.
And Sam Wilson becomes a big part of his journey
towards figuring out who Bucky Barnes is
outside of the Winter Soldier moniker.
You up for a little tough love?
You want to climb out of that hell you're in,
do the work.
Do it.
I've been making amends.
Nah. You weren't amending, you were avenging.
"Don't worry about me. Just keep on doin' what you're doing".
That's not me, that's in the script.
The Winter Soldier and Falcon are incredibly watchable
as a reluctant team who are out to save the world, frankly.
Hey, John!
How'd you find us this time?
I really wanted to do it like that.
You broke my thing.
It's been not just fun,
but also very emotionally charged at times as we explore this.
Because it's one thing to see it on paper
and then, as you know, Sebastian and Anthony
get a hold of the material,
they embrace it and embody it in a way
that we can't possibly have imagined.
So, every day a scene unfolds,
that is something I didn't anticipate
and it always gets better.
I gotta say, this is a very Bad Boys II shot.
This was a two-hander.
Two-hander don't mean just these two characters.
There's a spirit and an energy that comes from a two-hander.
Like here's the spectrum, right?
Defiant Ones. 48 Hrs.
This... And comedy's over here, right?
48 Hrs., Lethal Weapon.
Then comes Rush Hour, Ride Along and so on, right?
We knew we wanted to be somewhere near Lethal Weapon.
It's time for the soul gazing exercise.
I like this one.
He's gonna love this.
- Yeah, I'm ready. - Just face each other.
You should really enjoy this.
I really do genuinely love working with Anthony.
I mean, like there are definitely days
where I feel like he's gonna kill me.
Um... Not physically. Just like his presence. You know?
We have to get it with the light.
All right, just wanna make sure we're...
It establishes the location. This is his first movie.
Yolo!
The two of them are so good at bouncing off of each other
and going on a path of discovery.
Make sure you record all of this.
Quiet!
And Daniel Brühl the same, oh, my gosh.
The three of them together are at times so hilarious,
I have to kind of pull them all back and remind them, "Wait a sec.
"We can't be having this much fun".
In the Falcon and Winter Soldier writers' room,
we were inspired by key art done from Civil War of Zemo.
That was very much on the wall.
How do we get this
great iconography again back into the show?
And Zemo, the character, in Civil War,
is such a complicated and interesting character,
'cause he's a villain, but his point of view is very defensible.
I'm here because I made a promise.
You lost someone?
I lost everyone.
He was fighting to avenge these people he loved.
It came from a place of love,
even if it manifested in this horrible, tragic way,
it was important for us to maintain
that layered complexity of the character.
It took me two days until I found their bodies.
My father...
still holding my wife and son in his arms.
And the Avengers?
They went home.
I think we would've always have tried to figure out
how to get Zemo into the show,
but the truth is as we started to build the story,
there was a very natural way to slide him in.
You are assuming HYDRA has something to do with this...
which is why you came to me, which means you are desperate.
Luckily for you, I know where to begin.
I was very excited when I got the call
to come back and to read those scripts,
in which you have a lot of
meaty scenes and time to spend with Zemo.
He was a charismatic and pivotal role
in Captain America: Civil War.
You know, back then I thought I'd like to know more about him
and explore this character more.
I loved playing him,
but there was that slight bittersweet feeling
at the very end when I finished, thinking like,
"Oh, man, now I've played this guy,
but I never wore this mask".
He really blows me away in this thing
because he found a whole different side of Zemo
that you didn't even see coming.
So all this time you've been rich?
I'm a baron, Sam.
My family was royalty until your friends destroyed my country.
And he's really made this character
so dynamic and funny and different.
And there's a very human side to Zemo that's really cool.
John Walker was sort of an obvious choice
for us to include in the series,
not only because of his connection to the publishing run,
but also because he feeds directly into the conversation
about what the shield means today.
And he embodies a genuine desire to be good and to do good,
but that's not enough to be Cap.
The serum never corrupted Steve.
Touché.
But there has never been another Steve Rogers, has there?
We thought Wyatt was an interesting choice
because a lot of his work beforehand,
he plays, the stoner-slacker with the long hair and the beard.
But what we found in reading him, is there is an energy,
there's an edge to him
that neither Sam Wilson nor Bucky Barnes has.
And we felt that was important
so that John Walker stood apart from these two characters.
And to some degree, John Walker is coming into the show
with a chip on his shoulder
to prove that he is worthy of this mantle.
Just 'cause you carry that shield,
it doesn't mean you're Captain America.
Look, I've done the work.
I gravitate towards characters who need to make difficult decisions
and they have to be one thing
while trying simultaneously to toe the line over to the other.
You already have three Medals of Honor.
You consistently make the right decisions in the heat of battle.
Yep.
Three badges of excellence
to make sure I never forget the worst day of my life.
I had no idea the character I was playing.
I was just excited to be a part of this Marvel thing.
So I had no idea that
I was actually going to be an integral character at all.
They were like "Well, actually, you're Lemar Hoskins".
And I was like "Shoot! I know Lemar Hoskins".
'Cause I literally have the comic books. I have them.
I have the editions that he's in.
You know, that famous one,
the Captain America one,
him and they're on the cover, I have that.
All right, so I was just totally psyched.
And I was like, "I hope I get a suit.
I hope they make me a suit".
The costume puts you in, like, that superhero posture.
That sort of feels weird if you just do it on your own.
A word of advice then,
stay the hell out of my way.
There's a lot of similarities, construction-wise,
with John Walker's costume and
all the previous Captain America costumes.
I wanted to keep continuity of feeling and look.
So we used a lot of the same prints and the fabrics
and colors that we've used before.
I think we did tweak the red a little bit
and made it a little brighter
and patriotic than some of the previous costumes.
Definitely, definitely helped the attitude of the character
'cause it was just a little bit more arrogant
than I think that I would've been
if I hadn't had a little help.
It's really important, I think,
that when setting up a world,
you get into the characterization as quickly as possible.
And they both explored the conundrum of being a soldier,
and how difficult it is to walk the lines of following orders
as well as doing the right thing.
I killed him because I had to.
He killed Lemar.
Lemar is his voice of reason, right?
And then all of a sudden, he's gone.
First of all, there's a lot of vengeance
'cause now you've just killed my best friend,
but then there's a raging insecurity that just takes over.
He wants to represent the shield
the best way that he possibly can.
And the really interesting part is
in his mind, he kinda did because that's what he was trained to do.
These boots are not made for walkin'.
Typically, we go back to publishing and look for characters
that thematically matched the things we're trying to do in the show
and then put our own Marvel spin on them.
Valentina Allegra de Fontaine.
Actually, it's Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine.
I know it's hard, but I don't like to repeat myself,
so you can just call me Val.
We needed a character to be this sort of "Nick Fury",
but shady type, to sort of enter John's world.
First of all, the name alone,
Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine is just...
I mean, they had me there,
just with the name, to be honest with you.
You did the right thing taking the serum.
Yeah, of course I know about that.
And I'll tell you something.
It has made you very, very valuable to certain people.
Whether she's a good guy
or a bad guy remains to be seen.
She's sort of living in a gray zone, I think.
Couldn't have planned it better myself.
Maybe I did. No, I didn't. I'm just kidding. Or am I?
I like the idea of a female mastermind.
I think it's about time.
She's about three steps ahead of everyone.
And that's gobs of fun to play.
Things are about to get very weird.
And, you know, when they do,
we're not gonna need a Captain America.
No.
You know what we're gonna need?
A U.S. Agent.
How do you want the rest of this conversation to go, Sam, huh?
Yeah.
Should I put down the shield?
Make it fair?
So, we're on Zemo's apartment set,
which we built specifically for Zemo,
also to accommodate a big fight sequence
that we do in here when the Dora show up.
We started off training our actors here.
They do as much as they can, they learn as much as they can,
and perform as much as they're able to on camera,
but they got those spears, man.
When you're choreographing the fight scene
with spears, you can't fake.
A spear is a spear. You're gonna... You know what I'm sayin'?
Working with the Marvel actors
that have done these characters makes things way easier.
They know the deal. They know what their characters do in general.
Oh, God.
In terms of the ease and efficiency,
working on a set than working on a stage
is always easier, always faster, always more controllable.
And at the end of the day, that's what you need to do.
You need to control all the elements
when you're making big action.
So we had three of the Dora, we had all of our guys.
The room was filled with our characters.
And then pretty much everybody is smashing everybody else.
So it was a lot of fun.
Bast damn you, James.
It was, in my opinion, a complete no-brainer
to include the Wakandans.
I mean, Florence Kasumba is just a force.
Any time I get to play Ayo,
it's always like a Christmas present.
Because it actually doesn't really matter
where I would have to work.
I'm always excited.
Most of the time, when I get the phone call,
I don't even know the story.
I only know that I will play the character,
but I don't really know what's happening.
And, like the audience, I'm excited 'cause I have no idea.
I will have to read the books and train, of course.
I just got used to the fact that when I get the phone call,
I will always be ready to function,
just because I train the whole year through,
and am also in contact with the other women,
for example, who played the Dora Milaje.
It was really important, specifically to Kari
and to the rest of us as well, that the actors have an opportunity
to feel the location and to be there in real life.
Originally, we had planned to go to Puerto Rico for part of the shoot,
to give the show a bit more scope
because we were based out of Atlanta.
And, unfortunately, Puerto Rico went through
quite a sizeable earthquake that really damaged their infrastructure.
Our plan was still to go to Puerto Rico
even after the first earthquake
because we had done a ton of research
as to the seismic activity in the area.
We knew we could get our crews in and out quickly if we had to.
And, frankly, in talking with the experts,
even I was comfortable saying,
"Yeah, I'll go. I'll go with the crew".
Because, to me, if I'm willing to go, that means something.
If I'm not willing to go, but I'm gonna send other people,
that's not a choice we should be making.
We had prepped the crew to go to Puerto Rico
in spite of the first earthquake,
and on the eve of going, they had a second earthquake.
It just came to the point where, between Disney and all of us,
we just weren't comfortable sending anybody down there
and we wanted to bring our crew home
that was down there because we just didn't know.
So, we brought everybody back.
Right as we brought everybody back,
we regrouped, said "Where can we go now?"
We had planned Prague,
and we were gonna move Prague to the end of the schedule
to replace the work we were gonna do in Puerto Rico.
We actually made it to Prague.
We pulled off what seemed to be the impossible.
We were having a great shoot,
we were getting a lot of great locations and performances.
And about a week into our time in Prague,
you know, the pandemic hit,
or became very real,
and caused us to shut down.
And, frankly, the bigger fear
at that time was that we would be stuck.
We called our line producer at 2:00 in the morning for her, and said,
"We're getting everybody on flights out of Prague at 5:00 a.m.
You guys are leaving from 5:00 a.m.
We're gonna start calling every crew member, waking them up,
to tell them to get their stuff together.
We're gonna get everybody on flights.
Between 5:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m.,
everybody's gonna be on these flights".
We had about 100 people there
from the US and we just started flying people back.
Shutting down for COVID was a big part of the struggle of the show.
We're glad we did, it was the right thing to do.
And it, weirdly, gave us more time editorially
to really think about what the show could be.
But it also was something we'd never had to fight through before.
And it's a credit to our crew that they stuck with us,
they wanted to continue to make the show.
They were so invested.
Even when we came back
and COVID, obviously, was still and is still an issue,
to figure out how to mount the show safely,
and to travel internationally safely was a challenge.
But it was a challenge worth doing
because I know that it makes the show feel bigger.
I have to say, it gave us a certain kind of energy,
which was bonding.
You know, it's a big crew with lots of personalities.
And so, when we're all up against
such extraordinary circumstances,
it creates a brother and sisterhood
that is, I think, a bit extraordinary.
Over the next, obviously, eight months,
all we were doing with Disney is
trying to come together with a task force
as to how we could restart things, and when we'll be able to start.
We knew we had to go back to Prague. Right?
We hadn't finished in Prague.
We had to figure out how to make the Prague government,
the Czech government comfortable with
an American crew coming into Prague.
Because, frankly, Prague didn't have the same incidents of COVID
that we did at the time.
A lot of our scouting had to be virtual.
We couldn't have people flying back and forth
in the way that we typically would.
But again, ultimately our team rallied around
and figured out how to mount this production.
You know, I will say, a credit to the writers as well,
because as you're writing, you're writing to a specific location,
which is gonna dictate a specific story
to get you into Puerto Rico and then into Prague,
and you have to be nimble as storytellers.
And in Kari Skogland's case, as a filmmaker,
to visually get your head into this new place,
and to figure out how to make it work
seamlessly with the stuff that we shot in Atlanta
that, frankly, was meant to match
with what we were gonna do in Puerto Rico.
There was a lot of thinking that went into
how to adjust our entire production plan
to fit the realities of the world,
but a credit to the crew for figuring it out.
Do we want to live in a world full of people like the Red Skull?
That is why we're going to Madripoor.
What's up with Madripoor?
You guys talk about it like it's Skull Island.
We are in Madripoor.
Dangerous, dodgy, lawless place
where Zemo has arranged a meeting with Selby,
who's gonna give us, hopefully,
precious information about the super-soldier serum.
- Now that's the Zemo I remember. - Hmm.
I'm glad I decided not to kill you immediately.
We have to come here and it's not...
We didn't get a warm welcome. Let's put it that way.
And it's impressive to see...
You see? That's what happens in Madripoor.
High Town's that way.
Not a bad place if you wanna visit, but Low Town's the other way.
Let me guess. We don't have any friends in High Town.
Ray Chan, our production designer, is extraordinary,
and we looked for months, I have to tell you.
And one day, we're standing in a back alley
of a series of crossroads,
and we looked at each other and I said, "Do you think?"
And he said, "I think I could".
And I... "Okay. Oh, my goodness".
We started looking around and mapping it out.
And he came up with Madripoor
in a series of back alleys in a small town outside of Atlanta.
We want to feel the back street,
it needs to be more gritty.
Needs to feel more lawless. It's a lawless society down here.
Soon as we walked into this empty street, it clearly was empty,
it was just a two, three, half a dozen buildings,
of just red brick buildings,
I thought, "This was tight.
It felt claustrophobic. What can I do with it?"
This is called the Brass Monkey Bar.
It's an open bar. You can see the stars through the ceiling.
We thought we would look at it with the fixtures
being able to give enough light,
and, you know, not to light the set,
but to have a cool ceiling, a geometric ceiling.
Here, to your left, are these crazy monkey skulls.
My art director, Jennifer,
she scoured the Internet, and we purchased three skulls,
I think from memory,
and we sent them to our staff shop, which they cast,
I think, about 115 or 120 skulls.
And yeah, so that's a homage to The Brass Monkey.
We play him as very, sort of, conservative dressed.
His clothes are, sort of, every day, every man.
I mean, we did do some crazy stuff with him on this show,
the wild African suit,
and he was totally game to go for it.
- Cut. - Whoo!
I'm on. Let's roll again. I'm on!
Sebastian is great to work with 'cause he gets into the character,
and wants to know why are we picking these things.
And because he's sort of newly in the modern world,
I tried to make it feel as classic and vintage as we could.
Image-wise, it makes it very interesting
to see these three guys dressing up in a very different way.
We have to do something about this.
I'm the only one who looks like a pimp.
It was fun to have these couple of scenes
with the full outfit, you know,
with that incredible coat.
We had a lot of fun developing it.
You know, it's kind of based on a World War II Russian military,
Polish military overcoat,
and then we tried to make it a little
comic book-inspired on top of that.
Yesterday, I had a day off, and I went to a comic shop
to see if I could find some covers of Zemo.
So I got myself a couple of comic books with Zemo.
And it's just great to finally look like him in the comics.
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Cut.
We created this marvelous space
for our characters to, sort of be off-grid.
Well, this is too perfect.
Drop it, Zemo.
Sharon?
After a series of mishaps with the S.H.I.E.L.D. and such,
she has had to go to a place where you can live with impunity.
I also took the wings for your *
so that you can save his * from his *.
Unlike you, I didn't have the Avengers to back me up.
So I'm off the grid in Madripoor.
Bringing back Sharon Carter was something that we explored
even in Avengers three and four.
And the truth was there were so many characters in those films,
you couldn't really do her character justice,
nor where we had left her in Civil War.
One thing we thought was interesting was positioning Sharon Carter
as somebody who you think is naturally altruistic,
but building the mythology of this Power Broker
who also plays in Madripoor,
a new corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
And the mystery of who the Power Broker is,
we hope is satisfyingly revealed in episode six.
Drop your weapon, Karli.
I thought for sure
the Power Broker storyline was not gonna work.
Sometimes, we would be too heavy-handed.
You're like, "Nah, we see it coming".
And sometimes, it would be too thin.
And then, the more we start to work on it,
the more you start to work on it,
you're like, "Oh, this is great".
Come back and work for me again. All of you.
We can make a difference together.
You just want me because you need your muscle back.
Without us Super Soldiers,
how much power does the Power Broker really have?
More than you.
We knew we needed an antagonist
to challenge the notion of symbols
and ideology in the show.
And the Flag Smasher from the comics, Karl Morgenthau,
is much different, visually and in conceit,
than Karli Morgenthau is in the MCU.
But the root of that character is the same.
You're becoming a bit of a legend.
I hear more and more people talk about the freedom fighters
who are pushing back.
Nothing in this show works without Erin Kellyman.
What we were looking for was
kind of that innocent face that she has.
I wanted her to be unexpected.
You okay?
It had to be someone who, besides being instantly likable,
was someone who, in her eyes, has the resolve
and the toughness of having had, perhaps, a background
that is written in her face.
It doesn't have to be a war, Karli.
They started a war as soon as they kicked us
out of our new homes and onto the street.
People all around the world need me. Millions of them.
I can't speak for millions, but I understand you.
Can't have a hero and a villain in the room together,
having a conversation, and be honest
unless it is earned at every level.
And the first level is the actor.
I'm trying to figure out if I need to kill your brother.
I thought I could trust him.
I'd had, like, a few FaceTimes with Kari and Zoie.
But obviously, you can't put anything on that.
So when I got told that I got it, I was like,
"This is gonna be wild".
Like, I think it didn't sink in straightaway.
I don't even feel like it's fully sunk in now.
Oh, it's very dramatic.
I knew that it was a comic character,
so I'd done like a bunch of research.
When I realized it was a guy, I was like, okay,
this is pretty sick that, first of all,
they've turned him into a girl.
The movement is ready.
They're not going to stop.
Not unless we make them.
In the comics, in the research that I did,
it was kind of more pressing towards a villain.
And now that I've kind of got the scripts
and understand her a little more,
I know that it's all out of a good place. You know?
Do you remember how scared we were when we took the serum?
Yeah, don't think I'll forget that.
Felt like my veins were on fire.
I prayed it'd kill me.
But it was worth it.
In constructing the character,
we were like, "Let's make her a kid".
And, "Let's make her tap into the spirit of how people feel today".
And even though the pandemic hadn't hit yet,
that all just exacerbated a feeling folks were having.
And if you're Black, you've been having it your whole life,
which is, the game is rigged,
the people who are at the top are becoming irresponsible.
We accept that the game is rigged,
but now, they're getting irresponsible
in how much they're taking from us,
and people just have to push back.
And we wrote Karli as a hero.
She is a hero that goes bad.
I don't wanna hurt you.
You're just a tool in the regimes I'm looking to destroy.
You're not hiding behind a shield.
The legacy of Steve Rogers is
people have always tried to recreate that serum
and it has never gone well.
You can ask Bruce Banner, who, to some degree, became the Hulk
because General Thaddeus Ross
wanted to develop his own super-soldier serum.
Steve has always been the pinnacle of what should be.
We thought it was interesting, again,
in dealing with the legacy of the shield
to see what happens if somebody successfully
did figure out how to break the super-soldier serum code,
and who those Super Soldiers then become.
It doesn't even matter if we die.
The movement is strong enough to continue without us.
And I think that's what makes the Flag Smashers so interesting.
Is you get to explore the different side of what happens when people
who, frankly, sometimes are downtrodden or overlooked
are given power that they don't typically have.
You shouldn't have come here.
We're in episode 102.
And this is the first time that Sam and Bucky
have fought beside each other,
and they're not doing terribly well.
Good of you to join the fight, Sam!
Punch, kick, punch, punch!
And John Walker arrives kind of out of the blue.
John Walker, Captain America.
- Lemar Hoskins. - Looks like you guys could use some help.
First time they see him in action.
And so it's his first action beat
as well as Captain America with Lemar.
And the whole thing is a complete cluster.
Then on top of it, they're facing Super Soldiers
and they are completely overwhelmed with what that is.
No!
We started dreaming up this sequence,
I would say, about eight months ago.
And we had little toy cars and little toy trucks,
and, we went through, I don't know,
probably 12 or 15 different versions of this sequence,
because it was so difficult to achieve on the one hand
to imagine on the other, with this many people
dealing with all the various elements that one has to deal with.
The truck sequence was always challenging.
Mostly because they all need to stay on the trucks.
No one can fall off the truck.
No one can get back on the truck.
Falcon can fly around a little bit, but for the most part,
just the design of it, it was a very challenging design.
We had fake trucks that were four feet off the ground
and they could be moved around on air a bit,
we had people fighting on those.
Then we got real trucks
and we had a couple of shots with people
fighting on real trucks, but not many.
We're shooting in Atlanta.
We shot plates of a road that we thought
might be able to double for some part of Germany.
Then it became clear that, Atlanta does not look like Germany.
So, what was a bunch of guys on a blue screen
that we're gonna replace the background,
now becomes a complete digital environment.
So, digital mountains in the background,
all sorts of German trees.
Everything needed to be touched.
Bucky is hanging onto the side of a truck
with spinning wheels right by his head
that are completely digital. The road is completely digital.
There's a shot where Walker falls off
the back of the truck in Atlanta
and then we cut to him getting up in Prague.
We need to make both of those things match
and both look like Germany.
Adding digital cars and digital trees, make everything match,
it was kind of amazing.
Could have used that shield.
When starting any series, you wanna kick off
with as much promise of what the series is going to be as possible.
We had to say, "What don't we know that Falcon can do?
What are some cool other things that the Falcon we know he can do
that we haven't seen before?"
Part of the mandate is,
all right, well, if we're gonna do Falcon
as a titular character finally,
he's gotta have the best Falcon action.
I think the opening action sequence,
kind of, took us down that path
in the sense of a, just a, "Holy cow".
If we get to the border, he's not gonna follow.
What's up?
We spent a long time on this sequence.
This sequence was always part of the show.
It moved around parts of the show
and it was supposed to be like this big amazing thing.
Like any sequence we start with pre-vis
and we work through the blocking
based on storyboards that have been done.
And then we looked at the pre-vis,
like, "Okay, how are we gonna do this?"
One of the things that we did was actually,
we shot a group of skydivers.
And so, we had all this great reference material.
We have, literally, the world's best wingsuit fliers
who are ready to do this stuff for us
and get these shots that no one has ever seen before.
Everyone was really excited about it.
We spent several days pushing people out of planes
and getting all those suits... Those wingsuits are all real.
And we were inspired by a team that does that, you know,
flies through canyons.
They all had Blackmagic cameras
that we were able to mount on them,
and then had head-mounted cameras.
There are a few shots from that skydiving shoot
that made it into the sequence.
So, you get those pops of real that, I think,
help with the suspension of disbelief for the audience.
And, you know, we had Mackie on wires.
I could do a Will Smith one.
I can go for what, "Sweet Jesus!"
We had real Mackie,
you know, folded in wherever we could.
Most of the helicopters were CG. We did have a buck,
like a helicopter buck, for the interior work,
'cause obviously, the actors have to interact with something
but we even replaced the buck
because it was a very specific kind of helicopter
that we wanted to see in the sequence that would fit
the storytelling of the villains in that sequence.
And that's a huge testament to our visual effects team,
to Victoria, to Eric Levin. It's a pretty amazing thing.
For me the most impressive thing about it
was being able to mix all the different techniques that we have.
You know, it's one thing to have a fully animated CG landscape
and make it look as photo-real as possible.
But making sure that we do have close-ups of Anthony Mackie,
a couple shots of him flying on wires and the stunt guys.
And the aerial guys jumping out of airplanes.
Having enough sort of realistic stuff
so that when you put it all together,
you're not sure how we did anything.
We gotta find another way!
I just did.
The idea is to make it seamless.
The idea is that it is a shared universe
that you can never know what to expect.
So, characters may come in and out of shows,
may come in and out of films
in a way that hopefully feels organic.
We're shooting a scene in the museum,
where, Falcon, Anthony's character, Sam,
is deciding whether or not he's going to...
Well, I guess he's decided that he's going to actually give
the shield to the museum to hold
as opposed to him taking it on
and becoming Captain America himself.
I think Rhodey both understands
why Sam doesn't wanna take it on.
He's been in a similar position with Iron Patriot,
with a decision about Iron Man.
But I think he also wishes that he would,
because he thinks it's very needed right now.
The world's broken.
Everybody's just looking for somebody to fix it.
Don Cheadle and I discussed
the role a few times before he got here.
And he really wanted to bring something to the character,
and we talked a lot about, then, also, the one guy
who could really understand the complexity
of what it is for a Black man to carry the shield.
He is the one guy who Sam could connect with on that level,
and, so that became a really complex
dance between the two guys.
You know, for me, watching the two of them
go through this amazing history
we shot in our version of the Smithsonian,
which was the history of the Howling Commandos
alongside Captain America,
and it was so poignant to see them walking through the history
as we're putting that history to bed,
you know, it was giving us all chills.
I think something the comics do,
which works for that medium,
is they assume that a mantle has to exist.
Of course there's gonna be a Captain America.
If something happens to Steve,
somebody's gotta pick up that shield.
That's a very, you know, comic book-true statement
and it works for that format, and it's great,
and it allows you to see that shield pass through hands.
However, when you translate that to
a live-action sort of grounded story,
and to our real world,
it's really important to ask the question of why.
Why does there have to be a Captain America?
What does it mean today versus what it meant
when it was created in the '40s?
And what does it mean to different people?
Feels weird...
Picking it up again.
The legacy of that shield is complicated, to say the least.
Sam, you know, being a soldier and being a veteran,
being a counselor,
he realizes that as a people, we're all Americans.
I'm not Black Captain America.
Steve wasn't white Captain America.
He was solely Captain America.
So as a society, as a country, we need to realize
that all the people who are citizens here on this soil,
no matter what their origins are, they're Americans
and, you know, the old adage, "I am my brother's keeper",
comes into play, you know.
Sam realizes he deserves the right,
he's earned the right to be Captain America
and that has nothing to do with his race or his background.
I ain't gonna lie. You're special.
Thank you.
I mean, you ain't no Malcolm or Martin, Mandela, but...
No argument there, but I know what I've gotta do.
Isaiah Bradley is a character, I think,
comic fans have been clamoring for,
but most fans won't know. He was a Black soldier who,
much like the Tuskegee Airmen,
was tested on to try and recreate the super-soldier serum.
The secret of Isaiah Bradley is that it worked,
but because of his race, he was sidelined
by the American government and became a pariah.
You think you can wake up one day
and decide who you wanna be?
It doesn't work like that.
When you have two characters like Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes,
who are so close to Steve,
to meet a Super Soldier who had a completely different experience
than the one that Captain America had, is gonna be eye-opening
and very much informs Sam's feelings surrounding the shield.
Whether or not that's a legitimate thing to wish for or to not.
That what I think it is?
Mmm-mmm. Leave it covered.
Them stars and stripes don't mean nothin' good to me.
When we first started talking with Malcolm,
that was actually a character he asked about first
because, as a Black man reading comics,
that was a story that really resonated with him
when you go back to Truth: Red, White and Black.
So it was something that he really brought to the project
and I think really enriched the story-telling,
'cause it's a point of view that is often lost,
and again, unfortunately,
society sometimes catches up with narrative.
It's something that we're talking about
very much in our everyday lives.
What is the journey of being Black in America through time?
Not even just in the modern days,
but in the '40s, in the '50s.
It's always been quite a different journey.
And this gets to be an interesting lens
into that time and that character,
which very much informs how people feel about race today.
I used to be like you,
until I opened my eyes,
until I saw men in the Red Tails,
the famous 332 fight for this country,
only to come home to find crosses burned on their lawn.
I'm from the south. I get that.
But you were a Super Soldier like Steve. You could've been the next...
The next? What? Huh?
Blonde hair, blue eyes, stars and stripes?
He becomes the embodiment of your hero's fears.
Isaiah is challenging Sam
just on whether or not a Black man should be Captain America.
He has that line where,
"They will never let a Black man be Captain America,
and even if they would,
no self-respecting Black man would ever wanna be".
We didn't want Isaiah to be wrong about that.
That's gonna be part of his ongoing struggle.
He says, "Man, I know every time I pick the shield up,
a portion of the world's gonna hate me for it".
Sam gotta live with that as he goes off and tries to make this work.
It's been an emotional experience,
especially in the time in which we live in now.
For Marvel to give me the opportunity as a Black man,
from the south, to become Captain America,
I think, says a lot, not only about the work that I've put in
to get to this point that they would entrust me with that,
but the way that they're hoping
to change the way society looks at itself.
Look, you people have just as much power as an insane god
or a misguided teenager.
The question you have to ask yourself is,
"How are you gonna use it?"
That last speech that Sam has,
that's me and Anthony on the phone for a few hours.
Anthony has a Black man's perspective on the world.
And he's like, "Mal, I gotta believe this, right?"
So the first thing we did was
we had Sam talking to somebody in that scene
instead of giving a speech.
And then, the next thing was me on the phone with him for hours
making sure he felt honest at every single line in this thing.
You know what I'm saying? So now we are super proud of that.
We finally have a common struggle now.
Think about that.
For once, all the people who've been begging,
and I mean, literally begging for you
to feel how hard any given day is, now you know.
The final costume is very much drawn from the comics.
Drawing from the comics was really important
because it had its own legacy to start with.
So all the detail that goes into every...
And I can tell you, months of thought went into every seam.
Not only in the building of it, but in the design of it.
It's kind of a breath of fresh air.
Visually, it's almost the reverse of the other costumes we've seen.
There's a lot of white
as opposed to all the navy and red that we've seen before.
The upper torso and his face are really kind of highlighted.
Captain America's new costume
had a very specific cowl design that they wanted.
And it was very difficult to build practically in real life,
so when Mackie would move his head around, it would flex.
Because there is no magical material that can have that shape
and that flexibility and not move around
in a way that they didn't want.
So, they knew when they built it.
"This is gonna be really tough, you're gonna have to help us out".
And as it turned out, you know, there were dozens and dozens,
probably hundreds of visual effects shots
just to make that cowl look better.
So that it looks heroic and doesn't have weird gaps.
We don't want to see any seams in the costume,
we don't want to know that it was closed by Velcro.
It's just magically...
It's a magic costume built by the Wakandans,
so we need to bring that to life.
All right, watch this!
I think it was all to support a combination
of what the overall red, white and blue look was going to be
and that it had to be bright and positive.
There had to be an ultimately positive vibe to this,
you know, sparkling person...
Which is, and really beautifully, shown,
I think, in the final speech.
It has a, you know, a bit of a knight in shining armor quality to it.
It's a new Captain America, you know,
it's a new angle, and it's a new vibe
and I think he's got some really cool things
that are being explored in this from the idea of family,
pursuit of happiness versus this American Dream
that's bestowed on all of us,
but certainly how a Black man deals with that.
I mean, there's all kinds of actually complex,
very specific issues dealt in this
that are very applicable to the times that we're in.
This isn't about easy decisions, Senator.
You just don't understand.
I'm a Black man carrying the stars and stripes.
What don't I understand?
I know what it is to deal with something bigger than me.
With everything that's been going on with COVID
and the murders of Breonna
and the murder of George Floyd
and, you know, the riots and the activism
going on with the young generation now and, you know,
the Black Lives Matter movement,
it's been jarring to me and surprising
how timely this series is.
My truth has changed and evolved so much.
As far as me being a father,
as far as me being a man, and as far as me being an American.
And a lot of that has come out of this role and this series.
So, it's been humbling in a real sense,
but also inspiring to think
that my sons will be able to turn on the TV and see,
a Black Captain America.
Ain't gonna be easy, Sam.
Yeah, I might fail. I might die.
But we built this country.
Bled for it.
I'm not gonna let anybody tell me I can't fight for it.