Maxance Vincent
When Andrew Guest joined the making of Marvel’s Wonder Man, he confessed to Awards Radar that his familiarity with the character of Simon Williams (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) wasn’t as high as other superheroic characters within the Marvel sandbox, but he was eager to begin conceiving the show because of how different it felt from anything else the Marvel Cinematic Universe has made so far:
“From the first meeting, I was told that Marvel wanted it to feel different. You hear that a lot in my line of work, and people don’t genuinely mean it. They want different window dressing on the same product. However, they were serious, especially when I pitched them a show that was not like what they had typically done.
They said, “This is the show we want to make.” I told them, “Are you sure? Because I don’t believe you.” and they said, “Yes, we really do.” That was really exciting, because I think part of what was unique about the show was the part of the way it started, with Destin Daniel Cretton‘s working relationship with Sir Ben Kingsley on Shang-Chi. I was a huge fan of Destin’s work, and, obviously, Ben Kingsley’s. Yahya, of course, was drawn to working with Ben Kingsley and Destin as well. It gave this room for Marvel to put a little trust in the show and feel like it was in safe hands with trying something that felt different.”
In approaching the structure of the series, which deconstructs the archetypal stories of comic book characters, Guest expresses that he was “really inspired by things like The Bear. People have been trying to do a restaurant show for years. I have a restaurant background and have pitched versions of restaurant shows to people; it’s a really great setting for figuring out how to blend comedy and other tonalities. One of the things I’m blown away by in the pilot of The Bear is that the stakes of that episode are: can we get the food out of the kitchen? This is what you’re actually dealing with when you work in a restaurant. It’s so well directed and written that you care. I wondered if you could do the same for acting, even on a Marvel show.
Could we make the audience care about this actor, whether he gets a role or not? The stakes are: is he going to fumble his line, or is he going to be too in his head? That is the reality many people in our industry face. It can be hard to relate to us, because it is a weird thing that we spend our lives and passions doing, but I felt like that was a fun challenge, and one I really wanted to embrace. This meant creating a world that felt really real. That’s why we had American Horror Story, and we wanted to have Joe Pantoliano playing himself. It helps set a tone and a reality for these characters that makes you believe this is actually real.”
Of course, there was so much more to discuss in our conversation, including how Guest added texture to the character of Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley), who was mostly known as a comic relief before his appearance as Wonder Man, and how the last episode was conceived, particularly its final scene.
Listen to the full interview below:
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