From head writer Kyle Bradstreet and directed by Ali Selim, the Disney+ original thriller series Secret Invasion follows Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) as he tries to stop an invasion of Earth by a faction of rebel Skulls led by Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir). In order to succeed in stopping the impending danger and saving humanity, Fury must mend strained relationships with old friends such as Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) and James “Rhodey” Rhodes (Don Cheadle), who he’s neglected since the blip.

During this press conference to promote the new Marvel Studios series, co-stars Jackson, Mendelsohn, Cheadle, Smulders, Ben-Adir, Emilia Clarke and Olivia Colman talked about Nick Fury’s return to Earth, the difficult time Talos has been having, getting under the hood of Rhodey, lifting some of the mystery of who Nick Fury is, the addition of Clarke and Colman to the MCU, shaping the character of Gravik, the heavier nature of the story, and what they hope audiences take from watching these six episodes.
COLLIDER VIDEO OF THE DAYSCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT

Question: Sam, you’ve been in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with 14 movies and TV shows in 15 years. Where is Nick Fury at now, in Secret Invasion?

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: This is my second appearance post-snap. He’s been gone for a while. He’s a little tired and a little vulnerable, but coming back to Earth because he’s been summoned. So, we’ll see what happens. He’s got a bad knee now, and he’s not so happy.

Image via Disney+

Ben, Talos is back in the MCU, and we’re getting to know his family and see where he is, in the present day. What were you excited to explore, this time around?

BEN MENDELSOHN: We’re finding Talos in a difficult time. You’re not gonna get a spoiler out of me, so stop trying to give me that funny spoiler vibe thing. I got to do a lot of things while [Nick Fury] has been away.

Would you say there’s a strain on the relationship between Nick Fury and Talos?

MENDELSOHN: It’s not a strain. It’s an evolution.

JACKSON: It’s brotherly love. He loves Talos like a brother. He’s my green brother.

Nick Fury has a few friends that he keeps close, and Maria Hill is one of those friends. Cobie, after being a loyal friend to Nick Fury for so long, what was it like to get to revisit them together now?

COBIE SMULDERS: Working with Sam is my favorite thing. He laughs, but it’s true. So, it was really exciting to come back. Their relationship is quite strained because she’s been calling and he hasn’t been answering.

JACKSON: I remember meeting Cobie for the first time at the screen test. I screen tested with all the people that were trying to be Maria Hill, and she killed it. I was like, “She has this.”

Image via Disney+

When was that?

JACKSON: Before Avengers. The audition was straight-up techno-babble, and she had it down. She was one of the few people that knew all of it.

SMULDERS: And I have not gotten it right since.

JACKSON: There were actresses taping stuff to the monitors and trying to pretend they weren’t reading the techno-babble, and they couldn’t do it. She killed it.

Don, what’s going on with Rhodey, in the post-Tony Stark era of the MCU?

DON CHEADLE: We’re just finding out what’s happening with Rhodey, as this series goes on. He’s in a different role. We see him as more of a political animal than we have in the past. He’s been more of a military man, but now, in some ways, he’s the right hand of the president and this special envoy. What I’m looking forward to is just seeing more, and getting under the hood of who he is and seeing how this relationship, not only with Nick Fury, but the other cast members, evolves. No spoilers, but it’s gonna be some fun stuff.

How will this relate to Armor Wars?

CHEADLE: It will relate. There you go.

Image via Disney+

Sam, especially in episode two, we learn much more about Nick Fury than we have in 15 years of MCU movies. Were you afraid that lifting the mystery would weaken the character, or did you want to deepen Nick Fury?

JACKSON: Well, the more you find out about him, the more you’re gonna like him and the more I like him. It’s just peeling the onion and having a good time. I never had an in-depth scene with Don. That was manna. We’ve been waiting to do this for years and years and years, so it was wonderful to do and to have that little abrasive thing happen there. It’s great and nice to know that we have that kind of relationship, or I assumed it was that. That’s some new information. We get other new information. We go to his house. We don’t know, if it’s a condo. You’ve gotta watch to find out, if he lives in a condo or a real house with a yard. You’ll find out what kind of furniture Nick Fury has, whether he has an island in his kitchen, and if he can cook. Cooking with Fury.

SMULDERS: Oh, that’s a good one.

Emilia, after Game of Thrones, Terminator, and Star Wars, what attracted you to the MCU?

EMILIA CLARKE: This cast. Who wouldn’t want to work with all of those incredible people. Even just a single one of them on their own is enough. Altogether, it’s completely undeniable. So, yeah, that’s why.

Sam and Olivia, what did you enjoy most about exploring the tense dynamic between Nick and Sonya?

JACKSON: There’s no tension. The love scene is still in there.

CHEADLE: Wow, spoiler alert.

JACKSON: We broke the ice with the first explicit love scene, ever, in the Marvel Universe.

OLIVIA COLMAN: I’m not sure that it made the final edit, though. I was just so excited to meet Samuel L. Jackson. They have a lovely friendship, although she does quite like to bully him with her heavies. It doesn’t strike me as much of a friendship, but they’ve got history. They trust each other, or maybe they don’t.

JACKSON: As much as one spy can trust another spy.

Image via Disney+

Who is Sonya?

COLMAN: Sonya works for MI6, she likes wearing red, and she’s quite funny. She’s potentially a little bit not that nice sometimes.

JACKSON: She’s possibly the most dangerous woman in the UK. She lives in a dark corner of the UK that nobody can access.

COLMAN: I like that.

Kingsley, Gravik is not too fond of earthlings, from what we’ve seen so far.

KINGSLEY BEN-ADIR: I don’t think he’s too fond of anyone. There’s self-hatred there, too.

What attracted you to this character?

BEN-ADIR: To begin with, we had many conversations, for hours at the beginning, about why Gravik doesn’t really trust why anything was coming to him. He just felt like a part that I hadn’t been approached for before. There was an opportunity to do something that was a little bit different, with this one.

What influenced your performance as Gravik?

BEN-ADIR: When we spoke about the role, it was just Sam and Ben who were attached to the project, and they sent me a couple of taster scenes, which included the showdown with me and Sam. I kept seeing weird parallels because I knew the show was trying to be more grounded and darker. I took a lot of inspiration from that, in how to make him as unsentimental as possible, in his hatred. There’s something about how much he hates Nick and how much he hates G’iah that made it really enticing.

Image via Disney+

Sam, how do you feel about the heavier nature of this story?

JACKSON: I know my responsibilities most days, when I show up. I know my lines, I hit my marks, and I try to give the other actors something that they can work with. I come to work to have a good time. Making movies, for me, is my playground. When I get up in the morning, I eat breakfast, I go out, and I look for my friends to see what we are playing today. And then, we start playing and we have a good time doing it. That’s what I expect to happen. I want everybody to have as much fun as I’m having, telling a story or getting into the story.

Sam and Cobie, your characters were part of the blip. What affect has that had on their mental health?

SMULDERS: I think Maria Hill came back and someone else was sitting in her desk, and she immediately kicked them out and got to work because there was just a mountain of cases to get to. That’s part of her resentment towards Fury because he was not around.

JACKSON: It definitely has a mental health effect on you and it causes a different kind of rift between you and the people that you’ve been around or that you’re supposed to be close to. He hasn’t been returning her calls, and there are a few other people that he hasn’t been calling back

either.

Olivia, why join the MCU now, with Secret Invasion?

COLMAN: After every Marvel film that’s landed in cinemas, I found my agent and said, “Please can I be in a Marvel?” Finally, she either got fed up with me calling her, or it just happened. So, it’s not, “Why Secret Invasion?” It was just Secret Invasion that called. Any mention of the word Marvel and I went, “Yes, please.” I had an absolute ball, and it lived up to everything that I was hoping for.

Image via Disney+

Kingsley and Emilia, as two of the newcomers, did the other Marvel alum offer any advice for stepping into this world?

CLARKE: What I can say is that it was the warmest, most gorgeous, safe, lovely, happy, playful set I’ve ever been on. So, it’s less about advice in being in the world of Marvel. You come in, and you’ve just gone to the top of the tree, you’re there, and then you find everyone who’s there is just having a really good time. That’s how it felt.

BEN-ADIR: I agree with that.

MENDELSOHN: I’d like to add that Marvel are the best people that you’ll ever get to work for. In my 40 years, no one comes close to working for Marvel. Working for Marvel is the shiz-nit. It really is.

BEN-ADIR: Yeah, they really look after you.

Emilia and Ben, what was it like to work together, given the relationship between your characters?

CLARKE: I just love Ben. I love working with Ben. It was so much fun. It was really easy. There’s tension, but there is obviously a deep familiarity and shorthand and knowledge of each other. It’s just so easy and free, acting with Ben. It was just gorgeous. We had a giggle, didn’t we?

MENDELSOHN: We did.

CLARKE: We had a good time.

MENDELSOHN: We did. I was very intimidated, too.

CLARKE: No, you weren’t.

MENDELSOHN: No, for real. I’d watched Game of Thrones four times, so I was nervous. I didn’t know what to expect.

JACKSON: Ben is the only actor that I’ve ever met that walks around with his own soundtrack.

CLARKE: It’s the best. He has his own speaker.

JACKSON: This dude has a speaker and he’s playing music, all the time.

COLMAN: But it’s only good vibes.

JACKSON: It’s the best. You know when Ben is at work because you hear the music.

CLARKE: We had good times.

MENDELSOHN: Yeah, we had good times.

Image via Disney+

Don, this is your first time as Rhodey without Iron Man or any other Avengers with you. Was it weird entering this new path?

CHEADLE: It was liberating not to have to carry that dead weight. No. You can’t throw the softball out like that and not expect me to try to hit it out of the park. It was great. I’ve known Sam for a long time, and we’ve spent a lot of time talking about what it would be like to work together and looking for projects to do together. The central relationship between myself and Sam was very important to me, and I was very glad to be brought on. I don’t think it was originally conceived that Rhodey was gonna be in this. But Sam called me, and I was really excited about leaning into it. Also, being in a show like this, that’s really a departure from what I have been in, as far as the genre goes, was really an opportunity to lean into some human stuff, which was also a lot of fun. It’s a great cast, and Ali [Selim] is a great director and leader. It was just all upside. I was very happy to look into who Rhodey is, and to probe that more and find out what really makes him tick.

Sam, 15 years and 14 projects into the MCU, how has this experience compared to the others? Where does it rank, and what are you hoping audiences take away from watching Secret Invasion?

JACKSON: It ranks as number one, in terms of things that I’ve done in the MCU. I really loved Winter Soldier, and that tone flows into this, in a very real way. It’s a story about people doing people stuff, without all those supers coming in to save you and help you, and doing all that other stuff. I’ve seen all the episodes, and they’re marvelous. It was wonderful, being there. There’s a consistency of storytelling, which is what we need more than anything else. The L word doesn’t come into making movies very much, or what happens in them, but logically, this thing makes sense.

Secret Invasion is available to stream at Disney+.