Any Marvel movie interview is cool. How about one interview for ALL the Marvel movies. Only a few actors can do it. Samuel L. Jackson is one. Another is Clark Gregg, who plays SHIELD agent Phil Coulson. He gave interviews in the Thor press room at Comic Con, his second Marvel franchise after Iron Man.
Q: When you started in Iron Man were you dreaming of all the crossovers?
Clark Gregg: No, no. It was a couple of scenes that Jon Favreau was kind enough to throw my way in his Iron Man movie which people were very like “Really? Iron Man? Robert Downey? How’d you get insurance? It’s going to bomb!” I didn’t think so from the minute I showed up and saw Robert doing what he was doing and the script, but it was still just a little role. And then, something about it worked and they needed a real person and a face of Shield, so I just got really lucky that way, and by the end of it, it had become a great role. They had mentioned to me “Look, we’re going to do another one and we want you to come back.”
Q: Can you talk about the difference between working with Jon Favreau and working with Kenneth Branagh?
Clark Gregg: The way that the Coulson scenes evolved in both Iron Man movies were so specific to the way Robert works and the way Jon works and we had our own little thing. Some of the script would get used and some would get thrown out. We’d improvise some. It just had a very specific experience like nothing else I’d ever worked on. So, I was a little intimidated by the idea of taking this character from Iron Man and putting it into the world of Thor and having it still feel like the same guy that the audience was starting to get to know and still work in that movie with a different director. But I came to feel like Ken Branagh was exactly the right choice for Thor and that world and at the same time, like Favreau, an actor who directs, funny as hell, gives you notes in a way that you can’t wait to do them because the way he put them to you was so sarcastic and hilarious. Instead of having it be exactly the same Coulson, the Marvel guys started to unveil more about Coulson and SHIELD which, for me, is the fun part of showing up to work on these is I get to find out where they’re going to take this guy and this world in each movie. And I don’t think they know ahead of time always. They have a crazy master plan, but it really evolves out of who they hire.
Q: How about the convention in general? Since you’re a fan, do you walk around?
Clark Gregg: I was here a couple of years ago with Choke and I walked around for the first time and I was blown away. I loved it. I’ve only been here a couple of hours and I’ve been really taken up with this and I’m actually going to stick around tomorrow and walk around.
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