In that same vein, Sam Wilson’s character has to decide if he can be Captain American and wear the costume, knowing what these colors mean and knowing that some people will be angry that he’ll so do. Was that a tough hurdle to overcome to get that character to that point?
It’s what I showed up to do. I did it; it’s why I fought to get the gig because I felt like it was a compelling story and a story that’s relevant to right now. It was a platform that if you can have those kinds of conversations on the Marvel platform, you’re really landing them. People are going to hear it. So, no, that was important from the beginning, and it was a trip, you always wonder. I think there’s this image that people have of Mickey Mouse looming over your shoulder, telling you what to write and what not to write. I already said it in an old interview; at no point did Marvel flinch.
Were you happy or relieved that the reaction was so strong to Sam becoming Captain America?
I’m trying not to read too much. I’m not super involved online that much, but I will say I get it from the community, and that shit is amazing. If I’m on Crenshaw Boulevard and a young brother walks up to me, which happened to me, I was at Earl’s Hot Dog on Crenshaw, and he walked up and said, “Hey, man, thank you for that episode,” and talked to me about what it meant to him. Yeah, I was definitely relieved because that’s who I needed to resonate with, first and foremost, and it feels like it did.
That’s awesome. I also wanted to ask about Bucky’s arc because when he was in Wakanda, he effectively said, “I’m at peace because I’m not fighting anymore.” His character was what, 115 years old?
106 that day.
And he’s been fighting his whole life, and while ‘Endgame’ was clearly a special situation, it seems like he doesn’t want to fight anymore. Why do you think he still gets pulled into it? Does he feel like he has to? Do you feel like he’d prefer just to go off and not be part of any of this anymore?
What we wanted to do was we knew we were super excited to unpack all the baggage Bucky has accrued over the last 90 years, and a lot of it is documented. You saw what he did to Tony Stark’s family. We knew that there was a tremendous amount of guilt there for the character, and Sebastian can transmit that; he does it without dialogue. In all the movies, you feel it. You feel it in his eyes. We knew the fans wanted him to be relieved, so we wanted to do a thorough job at unpacking this baggage. We felt like we were, in some way, giving Bucky a rebirth. It began before, it’s obviously in Wakanda, but that is a transition. When you’re dealing with trauma and guilt, that is a process. So, in our mind, we encapsulated all the bodies that Bucky had collected over the years, and the older man, Yori (Ken Takemoto). We put it in the old man, and then we posited, leading up to this series, Bucky, as he said with his own mouth, he went from one battle to the next and never- him fighting for people allowed him not to have to sit that long with that guilt and with that trauma, and now that’s done. The big battles are done when we’re getting here, and he has to sit with him, and his first instinct is to go fight. To go fight bad people, of course. Remember when Sam said, “You weren’t amending; you were avenging.” That’s his road for him, to get to that place where he can go on now and really be self-realized. We needed him to have an intent, amends to make, and that’s what the Yuri character represented.
I’m not asking if you’re writing the next season, but do you have ideas in your head about where Bucky would go next? What would be the natural evolution for him?
If I tell you, then you’re going to ask me what that would be. I think Bucky is free in a way. Even coming out of Wakanda, he still wasn’t totally free. He was freed programming, but I believe Bucky is free now in a way. Look at the way he smiled at the end; he got a family, he’s invited to the cook-out, as we say in the community. He is free in a way that I think we haven’t seen, and that leads to a lot of possibilities for him.
I know you said you haven’t been paying that much attention to online discourse, but did you hear about the fans who wanted a supercut of Bucky at the cook-outs? Is there anything else to put out, or is it basically in the series?
Yeah. I can’t speak on the footage, but I will say Bucky and Sarah took up a lot of hours in the writing realm.*
*Director Kari Skogland confirms there was.
I’m actually curious about that. You are making a series; you committed to six episodes. Was there a lot that ended up on the cutting room floor? Just because it just didn’t fit, or maybe you shot something pre-pandemic, and it didn’t work when you came back?
It’s like that in every series I’ve worked on. As amazing as it is to have that space to work and dive deep, you still never have enough time. All the shit you want to get in there, you can never get in there. So, that’s always the case.
“WandaVision” had this whole fan theory discourse where people totally overthought who its guest stars were going to be. There was a little bit of leaking that there was going to be a character, that there would be someone from Wakanda. Were you a little nervous that people might assume A, B, and C would show up, and that wasn’t going to be the case?
Yeah, it’s intimidating, for sure, because we all enter these projects as Marvel fans, and we had all been happy and pissed as fans about what happens. So, you don’t want to be on the wrong side of that. I had moments where when I intimated that Val was going to make an appearance in episode five because I’m not savvy. I swear people were like, “Oh, shit. Thor is going to appear in this series,” and they asked me, “Who would you like to see the guest appearance appear with?” And I answered this question, and that went viral, so that is intimidating because you feel like you don’t want to disappoint the fans, but anything you say can be taken the wrong way.
How Julia Louis-Dreyfus even get involved as Val?
I wrote the character first without knowing Val was available. The character was available, so I wrote this shady CIA agent. That was all written, and then once we found out we could get Julia, we added the extra sauce of making her someone from the cannon, turning her into Val, and giving her that. If you get Julia Louis? I wanted to seize that moment. I worked in comedy before. So, I think she’s a genius, so I really wanted her to have those kinds of moments where a few minutes on screen and no one forgets.
Having gone through this process, what has been the one thing you’re happiest about with the end result?
It’s the reaction from fans and the community I come from because it is a significant thing to be able to create on a platform with this much power and this much reach. It’s a meaningful thing, and it’s very easy to underestimate that this shit does matter and how much reach it has. So, that people felt like we pushed, and we made him move the bar a little bit, and obviously, that can look terrible in print, but that people dug it and people I came up with dug it, [it] means a lot.
“The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” is available worldwide on Disney Plus.