“She-Hulk: Attorney At Law” stars Tatiana Maslany (Jennifer Walters/She-Hulk) and Jon Bass (Todd Phelps / Hulk Todd), as well as head writer Jessica Gao and director Kat Coiro discuss Season One and its amazing finale in this interview with CinemaBlend's Sean O'Connell.
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00:00 Yeah, who owns the story?
00:02 And who feels seen by the story?
00:05 And how do you claim your story?
00:06 - One of these guys is gonna slip up
00:08 and they're gonna give us enough information
00:09 so that we can track them down
00:10 and then we will find them and we will destroy them
00:13 by any and all means, legally.
00:16 I said by any and all means.
00:17 (dramatic music)
00:20 - It was really fun after seeing the totality of the season
00:27 to go back and rewatch the pilot
00:28 and just see how different you portrayed Jen
00:31 in those early stages.
00:32 And I'm curious how different you think,
00:34 what the biggest difference is
00:35 from when you first started playing her
00:36 to where she ended up?
00:37 - Yeah, that's a great question.
00:40 I mean, I feel like innately your body starts to respond
00:44 as an actor to having played a character
00:47 for an amount of time, there's a settling in,
00:50 there's a sense of like knowing who you are.
00:53 And I think for this character,
00:54 that actually really is true of who she is as well.
00:58 Like she's stepping into this world kind of blindly
01:02 and with like a lot of resistance and a lot of like,
01:05 I don't know how I fit into this.
01:07 I don't know if I fit into this.
01:09 And so to me, it felt like a natural thing
01:12 to sort of just embrace where I was at
01:14 in terms of like as an actor stepping into the Marvel world.
01:18 Yeah, again, the meta-ness of the show,
01:20 but like, you know, that's where Jen was at.
01:22 And I think she does come to a sense of like wholeness
01:27 and or a sense of integrating the sides of herself,
01:31 you know, that she's been sort of thinking of
01:34 as two separate things that can't marry
01:36 and that can't be together.
01:38 - Well, this entire first season is her origin story.
01:41 You know, the pilot, we got to see her physical origin,
01:44 but the seasonal arc of this entire first season
01:48 is really like her emotional and mental origin
01:51 of accepting She-Hulk into her life,
01:55 figuring out how to be both and the balance
01:58 and what the relationship between Jen and She-Hulk
02:00 is going to be.
02:01 That really is the actual story that we're telling.
02:04 - And then to that end,
02:05 because the finale is titled "Whose Show Is This?"
02:09 It's like the answer, the obvious answer is Jen,
02:11 but like the show is so meta and clever
02:14 that I'm wondering if there's a trickier
02:16 sort of answer to that.
02:17 (laughs)
02:19 - Yes, I mean, it is tricky
02:21 because there is no straightforward answer, you know,
02:24 depending on who you ask,
02:25 some people might say it's Jen,
02:26 but other people might say,
02:27 well, I mean, if K-E-V-I-N is controlling everything,
02:32 then it really is his.
02:33 And I do think that it is very reflective
02:35 of what it's like to make a TV show at Marvel Studios.
02:39 - Yeah, I mean, that's really,
02:41 I think what it nods to is also just the sense of,
02:46 well, there's such a response to Jen, you know,
02:49 to She-Hulk, the show coming out,
02:52 that there's an ownership over the right
02:55 for certain characters to exist or whatever,
02:59 that certain, you know, kind of trolls have a feeling
03:03 that they have an ownership over or an entitlement to.
03:05 So the proposing of like, "Whose Show Is This?"
03:09 I do feel like this show invites people in
03:13 who aren't necessarily Marvel fans
03:16 or who don't necessarily have,
03:17 haven't always felt like a place in that universe.
03:22 It's an outsider character, even in the comics,
03:25 she's sort of like not, you know what I mean?
03:28 And to me, that's the sort of theory
03:31 or the hypothesis of the show in a lot of ways
03:34 is like, yeah, who owns the story
03:38 and who feels seen by the story
03:40 and how do you claim your story and all of that?
03:45 - And the answer should be all of us.
03:46 - All of us.
03:47 - It belongs to all of us, just enjoy it.
03:50 - There.
03:50 - Hey, is everything okay?
03:55 - What the hell, you guys?
03:57 What kind of stupid finale is this?
04:00 - There is something really special about the Burbank lot
04:03 and seeing She-Hulk walk around the Disney lot.
04:06 It just sort of gives me goosebumps.
04:08 Do you feel pretty special when you're able
04:09 to sort of visit that location and walk around?
04:12 - Yeah, I really do.
04:15 I think any lot, especially in Los Angeles
04:20 holds a certain
04:21 genesequa, for lack of a better term,
04:26 but that one is definitely special
04:30 and walking around it,
04:32 it does sort of bring a childlike quality to it
04:36 because it's where you've seen so many things
04:40 come from there and then being an adult,
04:43 still walking onto that lot,
04:45 you're just sort of like, you get giddy.
04:47 It's amazing.
04:48 - You know, people are gonna be pausing
04:49 the writer's room sequence and scouring the walls.
04:53 To that end, do you have to be really careful
04:55 about what you put in there?
04:56 Is there stuff in there
04:57 that people should be looking out for?
04:59 - Well, the note cards definitely are realistic
05:04 as to the episode breakdown.
05:06 And there are some real writers in the writer's room.
05:12 They don't have lines,
05:13 but we do cut to a couple of them directly.
05:17 You know, there's so many Easter eggs.
05:20 I mean, the whole thing is an Easter egg
05:21 because we actually shot it at the Disney lot.
05:23 And so as soon as she busts through that menu,
05:26 we are living in an Easter egg.
05:29 And that was something that was really important to me.
05:32 You know, I was like, to make this concept work,
05:34 when she breaks out of the menu,
05:36 she has to be in reality
05:37 and that reality should be the real Disney lot.
05:40 And so everything you see there is pretty real.
05:42 - You and Charlie obviously have such incredible chemistry.
05:44 Are you prepared for the tidal wave of memes
05:48 that will be coming from Jen and Matt shipping, essentially?
05:52 - Yeah, I mean, I love it.
05:54 You know, you could feel it on the day
05:56 that these two characters somehow work together.
06:00 Like, they somehow made sense.
06:01 They have, like, I don't know,
06:03 they irritate each other
06:04 and also are attracted to each other
06:07 in a classic sort of rom-com way.
06:10 - Yeah.
06:11 - But also, like, to see Charlie bring
06:13 the kind of level of play and goofiness
06:16 that he did to that character,
06:18 it's just so, like, again,
06:20 it's just, like, the best thing to experience.
06:22 And of course you fall in love with him.
06:24 - I love his hero landing in the finale
06:26 and then you're just like, you missed it all, it's over.
06:28 - Yeah, like, into a grass field
06:31 where everyone's sort of, like, wrapping up.
06:33 - I mean, it was immediate.
06:35 It was immediate.
06:36 And like, you know, as someone who comes from rom-coms,
06:39 it's like, you can't direct chemistry.
06:41 So you have to rely on your actors bringing it.
06:44 And it's what makes or breaks, you know,
06:47 movies, episodes that are driven by chemistry.
06:50 The little secret is that I think those actors
06:52 have good chemistry with everybody.
06:55 - Oh.
06:55 - Like Tatiana, you know, Tatiana and Mark
06:57 had amazing chemistry, you know.
07:00 It's because they're just such great actors.
07:02 - So earlier in this season,
07:04 we got to see Emil Blonsky, of all people, get redeemed.
07:09 And show a nicer side of himself.
07:11 Is Todd redeemable?
07:13 Can he ever reform his ways?
07:15 - He could, I don't think he's going to.
07:18 - No?
07:19 - No.
07:20 I think, hopefully he gets worse.
07:23 - Really?
07:24 Oh, that's the path you'd like to see him go down?
07:26 - I think villains should always get more villainy,
07:30 you know?
07:31 I think that's sort of the vibe that people,
07:35 no one liked Todd.
07:37 (laughing)
07:39 I think people are asking for the kind edit for Todd.
07:44 So let's lean into it, you know?
07:49 - Fair enough, man.
07:50 That's the way to go.
07:52 Were you happy that you finally got a chance
07:54 to Hulk out as part of the program?
07:56 - Happy is an understatement.
07:58 - Okay.
07:59 - It's a mind-melting moment to see yourself Hulk out
08:04 on an actual, you know, MCU show.
08:09 It's the greatest.
08:12 - And now, when Jennifer Walters grows angry or outraged,
08:16 a startling metamorphosis occurs.
08:18 (growling)
08:20 - I want to ask specifically how time consuming it was
08:24 to recreate the opening of the Bill Bixby series.
08:28 - Well, in some ways it was simpler
08:32 than the rest of the show,
08:33 because there was a lot of practical elements.
08:36 You know, for example, we just painted a bodybuilder green,
08:39 as opposed to going through all the rigmarole
08:42 of creating our She-Hulk, which was very time consuming.
08:45 So it was, it looked old fashioned,
08:47 and it actually was kind of old fashioned to shoot,
08:50 which was fun.
08:51 - Yeah, there were a lot of practical elements
08:52 that were used in there, right?
08:53 Down to the old computers that she was typing on,
08:55 very, very funny stuff.
08:57 - Even though there were trolls on it,
08:59 it was an old fashioned computer.
09:01 (laughing)
09:02 - Before they kick me out,
09:03 is there an actor of note who's playing Scar?
09:06 - All shall be revealed.
09:08 The idea with this was a little nugget, a little hint.
09:11 - Okay.
09:12 - It served its purpose.
09:14 - It certainly did.
09:15 People are talking about his haircut.
09:16 There's a lot of commentary about his haircut.
09:18 - Well, I'll tell you, there was a lot of comments,
09:20 a lot of commentary about his haircut in the process.
09:23 'Cause you spent months developing that character
09:25 who you see for one second.
09:26 - Of course, everybody's asking
09:27 when we're going to see her next.
09:28 Have you heard any plans about like the direction
09:31 of where you guys might be able to go
09:32 in terms of the second season
09:33 or whether Jen's going to fit into a movie?
09:36 - How I feel about all of this at this very moment
09:39 is how my friends with kids have described
09:41 having their first child,
09:42 which is you have your first baby
09:43 and then everybody starts asking,
09:45 when are you going to have your second one?
09:46 And they're all like, I literally just gave birth
09:49 and I'm in the delivery room still recovering.
09:52 And that's all I can think about right now.
09:54 And that's how I feel.
09:55 - All right, fair enough.
09:56 I'll let you have that time to enjoy the ride
09:59 and appreciate the time with the fans
10:01 and your firstborn.
10:02 And I appreciate your time.
10:03 I'll talk to you soon.
10:04 (gentle music)