Finally, there were a lot of memes of your face after the first episode. I said to Sebastian a year ago, I just felt very lucky to be brought into the Marvel world with those guys, because they made me feel really comfortable and confident and all the stuff that you would hope to feel. I can’t say enough good things about them. It makes it very easy to work with and try and be good. Yeah, they hate me in real life and I’m okay with it. The other thing that is very clear in the second episode is that Sam and Bucky really do not like John. There’s 19 different versions of him in different worlds with different people! In one, he gets sent to Canada? I don’t know what the hell’s going on.
As soon as I started the Wikipedia rabbit hole search, it was like, this is a bad idea.
John Walker, the pro wrestler - bring it on! That was part of the problem with reading the comics. I didn’t know that, but I would love for that to pop in at some point. In the comics there’s a storyline where he has a whole pro wrestling part of his life. It sounds like the version of John Walker that you’re playing is slightly different than the one that we’ve seen in the comics. And now it’s like, Okay, go do that as Captain America - and sometimes his version of getting the job done is a little bit not the same. He’s just been working in the clandestine world, most likely, where nobody really knows what he’s doing but he’s getting the job done. Now he’s in this different world where there’s a PR aspect to it. government?” It’s the only corporation he’s ever worked for and it’s worked very well for him in his life. I think that what you’re seeing now is him battling with, “How do I be me and deal with this corporation that is the U.S. I think there is a corporate aspect to the inception of his character as Captain America. How should we expect him to evolve this season?
The first impression that I had of John is that he’s a slicker and maybe more corporate version of Captain America than Steve Rogers. We worked on a lot of shield work and footwork and all kinds of things to try and prepare us to look like we knew what we’re doing. So I worked a lot with my stunt performer, Justin Eaton. Anything you ask them to do, they can pretty much do. They can do backflips off a 10 story building. And that’s why you have this incredible stunt team. You don’t know where to put your hand sometimes. When you’re seeing him do his version of it, is it really who John actually is? Or is John trying to be someone that he’s not? What was the training like? What’s it like to handle the shield? In John’s world, he looks up to Steve Rogers, and wants to embody that. I just felt the weight of, can I be what they’re gonna want me to be? Or are they gonna lose a bunch of money? Did you study Chris Evans at all in preparing for the role, his mannerisms or movements as Cap? I thought that actually, it may be a good fit. That did have elements of what John Walker was, and when they kind of explained to me where he was and what he was, it fit how I felt about it in a way. It was like, wow, you know, I don’t know. And then do I want to be the guy who’s - do I want to wear the Captain America suit, to be honest. It was honestly more of my interest in playing the character where you don’t want to do anything that’s been done before. It sounds like you felt a little similar in being asked to do essentially do the same thing? The first time we really meet John on the show, he’s feeling the weight of this role that he’s taking on of being the new Captain America. Here’s what Russell had to say about picking up Cap’s shield, working with Mackie and Sebastian Stan, and what it was like to see his face meme’d across the entire internet. Based on the vituperative fan reaction so far to John Walker on the show - as Russell says, “They just hate him!” - it’s safe to say Russell has effectively made his Cap quite different from Chris Evans’. “I kind of had some doubts.”Įventually, Russell came around, in part, as he explained to Variety, because Marvel made clear they didn’t want him to play Steve Rogers 2.0. “My first reaction was like, ‘Ewwohhh, I don’t know if I’m your guy to do that,'” Russell said over Zoom. Initially, Russell didn’t want it either. It was only after he landed the gig that Marvel Studios told him he’d booked the role of John Walker, who takes on the mantel of Captain America after Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) turns it down.
Like so many actors before him, when Wyatt Russell first auditioned for the Disney Plus series “ The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” he had no idea what character he was trying out to play.