Marvel Television’s Wonder Man is getting ready to shake the MCU up this week, and as you may have heard, the show is one hell of a charmer!
That’s all thanks to the writers and creators behind the series, including MCU legend Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi, Spider-Man: Brand New Day) and co-showrunner Andrew Guest!
Recently, we were given the chance to sit down with Guest to discuss the new series and the future of Simon Williams in the MCU!
Prior to joining the MCU with his work on Hawkeye, Guest had quite the illustrious career among the nerd community. And we mean that literally because he was responsible for some of the best episodes of Community, including “Advanced Dungeons and Dragons” and “A Fistful of Paintballs.” He also wrote for Suburgatory and Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
So naturally it was obvious that he knew his way around comedies pretty well. So how did he bring those sensibilities to the MCU? Take a look at what he had to say about this in the interview right here:
You know a little something about being meta – going back to Community. And now you’re using all of those skills in Wonder Man. Was it second nature for you? Do you think everything you’ve done so far has led you to this, or did Wonder Man present challenges of its own because its so rooted in the MCU?
Guest: This was a really big challenge in a lot of ways because the stakes feel high when you’re doing an MCU project. There’s a lot riding on it and you want to deliver. Getting the chance to work with Destin Daniel Cretton, and Sir Ben Kingsley, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II – you want to put something on the page they’re going to be excited about. That was scary and I’ve never run a show before. All of that was really frightening and intimidating. I did lean back on some of the tricks I’ve learned over the years in places like Community.
I’ve learned so much over the years from incredible showrunners like Dan Harmon and Tina Fey, Emily Kapnek, Dan Goor, that I felt like I put in my 10,000 hours. And there’s things I wanted to do when I was approaching the writers room that I felt like I finally got the chance to do, which was really fun. But I tried to put the characters central to the show. I felt like in TV that’s the thing you come back to week after week, or episode after episode if you’re binging, that you want to know what happens to these characters. You’re not telling a singular story. You’re telling an ongoing story with people that you care about.
Wonder Man feels different from any other project we’ve seen in the MCU. This really puts the Trevor and Simon relationship up front. It’s Midnight Cowboy. And it places that in front over the superhero part. Was that something that was more interesting to you than the superheroics, and where did the Midnight Cowboy references come from?
Guest: Midnight Cowboy was one of the first things that popped into my head when I started thinking about this show. Because Trevor feels like such an outsider. And I wanted Simon to be an outsider as well. And I look at that movie. And I look at Ratso and I look at Joe Buck, and their relationship – which starts with a lie also. It’s one of them trying to get one over the other. And then a real relationship is formed. One that you care about, which breaks your heart by the end. I felt like if we could do that, because we had Sir Ben, and when we got Yahya, we knew those two could pull that off. And that’s going to be a moving story that we hope people will connect with. Those are our special effects as far as I’m concerned. These performances.
Now I promise I’m not trying to get you in trouble with Marvel, but you have a great relationship with the Russos of course. I’m not going to ask for spoilers on Doomsday or anything, but have you at least spoken about getting Simon into the fold with the rest of the MCU?
Guest: I have not spoken directly to the Russos about it. The Russos are the reason I ever started at Marvel. They’re the ones who made the call back in the Hawkeye days. They referred me to Trinh Tran who was looking for someone on that project, so I owe a lot to the Russos. Whenever they call I pick up the phone. They have not called me about Simon. I have a feeling that, if audiences connect with Simon, the way I hope they’ll do, that it’s not too late for him to show up in Doomsday. That doesn’t air for another, 12 months? So we’ll see!
We can only hope at this point. Huge thanks to Guest for making the time for us!