Thunderbolts* touched down in Los Angeles on Monday night, with stars Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, David Harbour, Wyatt Russell, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Hannah John-Kamen and Lewis Pullman debuting the latest Marvel project.
The film follows an unconventional team of antiheroes — Yelena Belova, Bucky Barnes, Red Guardian, Ghost, Taskmaster and John Walker — as they come together for a dangerous mission, and is earning strong reviews following a rocky period for the MCU over the past few years.
On the red carpet, Stan told The Hollywood Reporter, “It’s always funny when there’s that dynamic with people like these characters, right, because technically are they villains? Are they heroes or not, where do they stand? It’s what [his character] Bucky Barnes is essentially, he’s always been trying to figure it out and they are too.”
Stan has played the role for nearly 15 years, appearing in a host of Marvel projects including the Captain America films, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame and the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday.
Now, he said, “I feel like the hardest era for Bucky, for now, has passed” and when it came to playing the character in Thunderbolts*, “I always thought of Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven when I was broaching this movie. It’s sort of like the older guy that’s been there, done that; so ‘take it from me kid’ kind of thing, that’s where the sense of humor was coming from. But it’ll be interested to see how people feel” about Bucky this time around.
Pugh, whose Yelena Belova serves as the group’s front woman, also spoke about how being in the MCU is vastly different from her other projects.
“Working on a Marvel movie is always so bonkers, you’re like, ‘We’re going to do that?!’ And it’s shocking the moment when someone tells you like, ‘We’re going to put you on a wire,’ let alone being like, ‘We intend for you to jump off the second highest building in the world, how do you feel about that?’” she joked. “You would never try to implement that in the normal day job, that’s crazy.”
Louis-Dreyfus, who plays CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, echoed, “To be a part of this genre of moviemaking, there are really no words for it. It’s a complete blessing and I’m just delighted to be a tiny little piece of it, just because why wouldn’t I want to be part of this fun?”
Thunderbolts* hits theaters on Friday.
Coy Jandreau contributed to this report.
