The stars and filmmakers behind Marvel's Disney+ series, "Loki," including Tom Hiddleston (Loki), Owen Wilson (Mobius), Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Judge Renslayer), Wunmi Mosaku (Hunter B-15), Kate Herron (Director) and Michael Waldron (Head Writer) discuss their new show with CinemaBlend's Eric Eisenberg. Take an exclusive dive into the inner workings of the TVA and the God of Mischief himself as he wreaks havoc on the Sacred Timeline.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00 Is it a rule that you'll only work with Tom Hiddleston if there's time travel involved?
00:04 It's a coincidence.
00:07 Well, it is a rule and, you know, our lawyers worked it out long ago, but
00:15 it's one that I'm glad that you've picked up on.
00:20 The timekeepers have built quite the circus.
00:22 And I see the clowns are playing their parts to perfection.
00:26 What was it like to witness Loki's death?
00:33 I first have to ask about Loki witnessing his own death, because that is such a monumental
00:39 thing. And I'm just I'm curious how you even process a moment like that as an actor.
00:43 Well, that moment I would just was when I first became aware of that was where the
00:51 scripts are going. I thought what an extraordinary moment to inhabit.
00:58 And then, of course, you think, what would it what would it be like for me, for anyone
01:04 to sit and watch that? And how would it then change your sense of yourself,
01:09 your journey through your own life? You know what you thought you had intended to do,
01:15 what your motivations were, what was important to you? And then to see, oh, it ends there.
01:22 And it would be. Yeah, it would be a hell of a it would be cause for concern.
01:28 That's so funny.
01:32 Glorious purpose.
01:34 It throws into question the whole root of his sense of meaning in his life, where he
01:45 is derived meaning and what his purpose was. You know, I think it's a really interesting
01:51 question just to think about is we all have to as we as we move through our lives, we have to
01:56 think about what we're doing and why why we're doing it and what we're working towards. If
02:02 we're working to basically want our lives to mean something. And I think he's decided his
02:07 glorious purpose is a is a reason for is a reason for kind of doing what he does. And then I think
02:15 that through that, it's the whole thing is called into question. And he has a kind of
02:19 kind of nervous breakdown, a kind of a or at least a breakthrough, a breakthrough where he
02:27 is confronted face to face with himself, his choices and the things he's done. And
02:35 yeah, I don't know. Cause for concern.
02:39 I think we tried to create a very intimate atmosphere on set when we were filming that,
02:45 like when we were filming on the memories, I actually had them all on my laptop and I was
02:48 kind of DJing them from my computer. But I just love that scene. I think the way Tom plays it.
02:54 And as he goes towards it almost felt like how we all imagine or felt when we saw like,
02:58 no, what the hell is going on? And like, I think he really captures that just complete
03:03 horror. And like you said, like, that's what it was for. Like, that's what I got. And I love the
03:10 kind of, there's this moment where you see him react and we have almost like the focus slips,
03:15 but I kind of love it because I almost feel like it's kind of his feeling on reality,
03:19 like slipping around him and yeah. And then the end of file comes up, which is so cruel.
03:24 And so again, in the mundane world of the TVA and I think, you know, he starts to laugh because what
03:28 can you do? You've got to, you're going to cry. You're going to laugh. So I think that,
03:32 yeah, that moment for me is very chilling and it's yeah. One of my favorite moments working
03:37 with Tom, definitely. I just think he does such a beautiful performance. So.
03:41 What a humbling thing to see how your life was meant to play out. You know, he says in the first
03:49 Avengers, you know. An ant has no quarrel with a boot. I think Loki, certainly this version of
03:56 Loki thinks he's the boot. And in that moment, he very much finds out, no, you're the ant.
04:01 I beg your pardon? And so it's humbling. It forces self-reflection and introspection in a way that I
04:10 don't think Loki's ever done before, which is really interesting. We were just very excited
04:16 about that moment because it's a cool thing to witness. You know, this is a guy who's escaped
04:23 death a lot. And to just see the finality of that, the violence of it, it's horrible. It's a hard
04:31 thing for me to watch because I love the character. But Tom's just so tremendous in that moment. And
04:36 it's one of my favorite moments in the whole series. Yes. Very sad. Anyway, it got me thinking.
04:41 Go ahead.
04:44 Just to speak about kind of the Mobius relationship with Loki. I mean,
04:48 one of the interesting things about this dynamic is just that Mobius knows everything about him.
04:53 He knows him backwards and forwards. And I'm curious if that was something that was kind of
04:58 part of your preparation process. Mobius is watching.
05:04 It was, you know, I was saying that the whole sort of TVA and the way the sets had,
05:10 and even our sort of wardrobe had this sort of bureaucratic kind of, you know, strangely
05:19 futuristic, but then also sort of retro Orwellian look to it. And that was, you know, that's what,
05:28 you know, Mobius brings to the table when he sits across from the God of Mischief. And
05:34 he needs something because, you know, you're talking to a God. So
05:38 you better have something. And what he has is the weight of the TVA.
05:44 For all time.
05:45 Well, actually, I mean, I wanted to ask about that relationship, because it's strange that
05:49 you guys have a history, but time isn't really a thing. So it's kind of hard to piece together.
05:55 But like, did you have a reference point for that relationship? Like, did you like,
05:59 either in movies or just from personal experience?
06:02 I mean, personally, I always looked at it as a sort of like, a sort of version of the M
06:07 Bond dynamic, you know, as in like, you know, with me being M and Mobius being Bond, this sort
06:16 of rascally agent that just is a bit maverick. And my character sort of appreciates him for
06:22 the facts that he takes up on these maverick challenges, but also kind of has to have him
06:28 to the line as well. So I sort of looked at it a little bit like that. But then I think there's
06:32 a slightly different chemistry going on. I think they have a long standing friendship and
06:36 there's sort of layers to their history.
06:43 I feel like I'm always looking up to you. I like it. It's appropriate.
06:46 Look at this character. Look at Hunter B-15 from a macro perspective.
06:51 This is a character who's not a human, but a being who knows the inner workings of the
06:56 universe, knows the rules and kind of lives to enforce them. Where do you even start
07:00 with that character? And what mind space do you get into when you're playing a scene?
07:05 Well, it's just, she's someone who just wants to, she knows the rules and she sticks by them.
07:14 So once I know the rules, that's it. That's her modus operandi. That's her goal. And that's what
07:21 she sticks to. And so that was, it really is about learning about the TVA and what it's there for,
07:30 why it's there. And yeah, that's it. That's all that matters to her, really. That's the
07:37 only thing that matters to her. How far did you go as just in terms of
07:41 defining the rules of the TVA? Because there are obviously so many questions that are sprung out
07:46 of this. I'm curious just how far you went as far as figuring out the answers.
07:50 I mean, we went so far. Eric Martin, one of our writers wrote like an encyclopedia,
07:56 basically, of it. We had to. That was the first, one of the first and most important tasks of the
08:02 writers room. After we sort of landed on the real emotional core of the show, we had to define the
08:11 institutional rules of the TVA. What is a time travel law and how do you break it? And so that
08:21 required a lot of drawing of lines on the whiteboards with other squiggly lines coming
08:26 off of it. A lot of writers yelling at each other over what, how time travel worked and everything.
08:32 And at the end of that, we'd all created a foundational shared knowledge that then our
08:39 job became, okay, how can we download this to the audience and then have them never really
08:46 think about it again? Because I don't want people thinking about rules while they watch the show.
08:51 It's got to just feel natural. So that was, I would say that was probably the biggest challenge
08:56 and from the writers, one of our most important jobs.
08:59 There was essentially an encyclopedia that was built to kind of explain the rules of the TVA.
09:05 Was that something you had access to?
09:08 It felt like I listened to the audio version of that. Beginning with sort of a podcast by Tom,
09:16 a Loki podcast, which I attended actually in person. Yeah. So many people dive into the whole
09:29 MCU and I had, we could probably auction that off. It'd probably be a great thing for charity
09:36 to have Tom Hiddleston walk you through the MCU because that's what he did to me.
09:40 And it was a beautiful walk. I am smart. I know. Okay.
09:46 Okay. But I also do want to ask about working with Sofia DeMartino because
09:53 obviously massive reveal. I'm curious just about working with her. And also,
09:58 is there a sense of like getting your own performance reflected back to you?
10:04 I think certainly there's in that second episode, there was a moment of taking these characteristics,
10:12 which I had found interesting about Loki, that his capacity to sort of
10:19 provoke and disrupt and manipulate with charm, often with charisma, with wit,
10:27 he's sort of always playing chess with people. You're never quite sure if it's sincere,
10:31 if you can trust him. And seeing those characteristics inhabited by other people
10:37 was really interesting. It was a really interesting mirror for me. And then also a very
10:43 freeing feeling of like delighting in how those, the qualities of Loki might exist
10:54 outside of me completely. And I really enjoyed it. It was just, you know, really fun. And
11:02 I don't want to spoil things, but you'll see where it goes because we contain multitudes
11:10 as some great psychologists once said. I like it. Swap it on a t-shirt.
11:16 Sofie is great. Her energy is amazing. She does a great job in episode two and they're
11:22 seen together in matching his energy there. It's really fun, albeit brief.
11:29 I always knew, you know, in a show about branching timelines and variants and everything,
11:36 we wanted to hold up a literal mirror to Loki. And so, you know, this is one of the ways we're
11:45 going to do it. Did you actually get to keep anything from set? Just because, I mean,
11:49 the production design in this is absolutely gorgeous.
11:52 I have my tie.
11:53 Nice.
11:54 Tie that I wear, but had I been able to keep something from the set, you know,
12:00 I talked about how even set sometimes that I wasn't involved, that I didn't have a,
12:06 you know, wasn't acting in, I'd go up to take a look at just because they did such a good job
12:11 with the production design. It really, I think, is cool looking.
12:16 That comes part and parcel of my next question, which is about the creation of the TVA,
12:20 because this is obviously such a massive idea that you're introducing to the MCU,
12:25 but you also have matched it with this really just fascinating aesthetic that is both futuristic
12:30 and 70s. So what was the evolution of that look and just kind of where did it start?
12:35 What were the other ideas tossed around and what was the conversation that led to
12:39 the final decisions?
12:40 Yeah. So when I pitched basically, I mean, where I grew up in Southeast London,
12:44 there's a lot of brutalist kind of architecture.
12:46 Clockwork Orange was filmed very near me, so was Children of Men.
12:50 And I love the idea of this organization, you know, having this kind of brutalist kind of
12:56 architecture, but mixed with this kind of Midwest architecture, because, you know,
12:59 these guys are heroic and very classy and, you know, they save the universe.
13:04 So I just felt like an interesting meld to me.
13:06 And I think for me, like, honestly, it was interesting trying to create a place that
13:11 existed outside of space and time, because there's no sun, they're not on a planet,
13:15 but like in this unknowable place.
13:16 And I think somewhere I definitely drew from was the comics, because they had those amazing
13:20 images of, like, you know, office desks stretching into infinity.
13:24 And that's definitely something we've carried across with all the TVAs look and aesthetic.
13:28 And then also just working out with the style and the lighting, like me and my DP were really
13:33 inspired by, you know, film noir and detective stories.
13:36 But actually somewhere where there is no sunlight, lent itself very nicely to, you know,
13:40 hard shadows and that kind of moody look.
13:42 So I think for me, like I was drawing from all kinds of places, I like the idea of the
13:48 TVA having this kind of retro futuristic technology, because I've also worked in a lot of offices.
13:53 And often the technology is not updated and it is like in need of an update.
13:58 And I thought for me that was really fun and exciting was, you know, like even the weaponry
14:03 they have, like looks in some ways it looks dated and basic, but then you actually see
14:07 it in action.
14:08 And it's like, oh, no, these they're very powerful and not to be reckoned with.
14:12 - Hi, you're doing well?
14:15 - Yeah.
14:15 - Why did my jet ski magazine put it down?
14:17 Come on.
14:17 - Have you been on a jet ski since this performance and has it raised your appreciation for their
14:22 existence?
14:23 - I can't say that I'm the biggest fan of jet skiing.
14:28 - So that was acting, that was just pure acting then?
14:33 - Yeah, it was just pure acting.
14:35 I put them, you know, they kind of remind me of aquatic leaf blowers, which I'm not
14:44 the biggest fan of either.
14:45 - I go back.
14:46 - Now I have been on a jet ski, when you're on it, it's, you know, it's great.
14:51 It's, you know, pretty exciting.
14:53 You feel like Poseidon.
14:54 The problem is, is if you're standing on shore being subjected to it, not the greatest.
15:00 It's not Walden's pond.
15:01 - It'll be fun though.
15:03 - Yeah.
15:04 - Yeah, it'd be really fun.