The Point Radio: AGENT CARTER Slides Into The Marvel Universe

All eyes are on Marvel this week with the debut of AGENT CARTER, and our first full look at The Marvel Universe post CAP and pre AVENGERS. Series star Hayley Atwell talks about her feelings on playing what has become a key part of the mythos. Then, we sit down with the cast of TNT’s THE LIBRARIANS who give a lot of solid reasons why if you aren’t watching, you might just be missing something good here.

Transcript

The Point Radio Hey it's Mike Raub. All eyes on Marvel as Agent Carter premieres this week. And we talked to actress Hailey Adwell and all those people who helped make her look fabulous. Plus it's been a decade since the very first librarian TV movie on TNT. And now the new series is a huge hit. We talk to the cast who tells you just what you may be missing.

Let's get to The Point. This is The Point. The Point Radio. Get The Point Radio. Marvel's Agent Carter gives us our first television look at the earliest days of the Marvel Universe. Starting of course with the first Captain America movie through the second and in that digital short as well. And show writer Eric Pearson explained to me how the whole process began.

We made the short. We had no idea we were turning to a television show and that wasn't even our agenda. It was just to tell us we knew we had a valuable asset with Hailey Adwell playing Peggy Carter. Everyone from Cap to Winter Soldier to Armand Zola. All were in the modern day. You know, being frozen or experimentation. Even the redstone might be roaming the earth.

How do we tell a Peggy Carter story? So we said let's go back. Let's go back in 1946. Let's pick it up a year. Approximately a year after Steve's demise and see what Peggy Carter's doing. And having such a talented, committed actress Hailey. After we completed the short and showed it to the people at Disney.

They also knew we had something very special. And so why don't we make it a television show? And that's why we're here at Disney. Director Louis Esposito says this is a little different side of the Peggy Carter we've seen so far. I think what's equally exciting now is not only seeing Peggy Carter at work, we'll see her at home.

And not in any of the previous Captain America. So you don't see that. You see Peggy out on a mission. Maybe one time with a red dress on potentially meeting her Captain America. But with this series, with the centers around her, we can spend a lot of time with her both in the office and at home.

And how she deals with her life. Does she want to find another love? What friends does she have? And how do they relate to each other? And what is she telling them?

She can't tell them she's a super spy. So I think that will all make her interesting storyteller. Agent Carter is of course actress Hailey Adwil. Who says from the beginning it's been a great ride. It's a dream.

It's so surreal. I was so lucky to get Captain America. Such a big turning point in my career and for my personal life. And it changed my life. So I have incredibly fond memories of that in the first place.

But now to be four years later, still with Peggy and even bigger and deeper and fuller and richer. It's just heaven. I'm with these guys. I'm in good hands. Knowing the panel of writers and knowing the general arc of where we want her to be and what audiences want.

And having to go beyond their own expectations to make a great show. It's indeed a lot of exciting challenges for me as an actress as well as her being herself. For all of us who saw Winter Soldier we pretty much know where things end for Peggy Carter. But for Hailey was it unusual playing a character that way? I think it's easier in the sense that I would always hope that Peggy had a fulfilling life.

And know that she did. She's able to have a family and live a very rich life before she dies. Just means that this is now a matter of filling in the gaps. And how exciting can we make her life as a great tribute to the woman that she ends up becoming. And of course there are still ties to Captain America.

He's never far from her thoughts and he's very much part of what is forward to who she is now. So I think that's something she'll always take with her. Creating an action adventure series set in a world with no technology could be a problem. But not so for showrunners Tara Butters and Michelle Fazekas. I kind of love it. I was saying I love no cell phones.

No cell phones. I love no cell phones. Because when you're writing any sort of procedural with this it's like oh they could just call and find out. Or they could just Google it. So having those restrictions is actually really nice. It also creates other types of tensions for the fact that you know something and you want to tell somebody that you can't.

You know I mean there's just so many fun things you can do with less technology. And then you have the Marvel technology. And it'll be fun. Marvel's had a rich cast of characters from the 40's including a number of superheroes. And my question was any chance we might see them pop up in Agent Carter?

I mean those are options that are on the table. You know we have no specific plans but I would say we are very open to that. Marvel is very open to that. I think they're being very generous with whatever is the best story idea as long as it's not conflicting with what they're currently doing. So everything is open right now. Marvel's Agent Carter with new episodes every Tuesday.

And of course you can always see more at ABCGo.com. So let's break it right now in the world of pop culture. No surprise that Disney plans a lot of promotion for Star Wars The Force Awakens over the next 11 months. One of those forms of promotion will be short form shows about Star Wars. Done on the multi channel network Maker Studios various web celebrities will be part of the new features.

You should look for those to be rolling out sometime over the next few weeks. And of course they'll continue until Star Wars opens in theaters on December 18th. Biggest question of the new year continues to be when's Game of Thrones coming back. But more importantly what's the next move for HBO. And the answer to that is a new feature on Thrones which will debut on the network on February 8th.

There should be at least a few scenes from the upcoming season in the special. By the way as we told you a couple of weeks back Game of Thrones again holds the honor as being the most pirated show of the year. Torn Freak reports that over 8 million people downloaded the season finale online. Marvel is heading back into the weekly comics arena with a spin off from the death of Wolverine. The new title is called Wolverines.

It'll be launching in a few weeks and it spins directly out of the series. Death of Wolverine the Webin X program. Actors Jennifer Saunders says she's finished the first draft for a big screen version of Absolutely Fabulous. And that the film will be made this year. The feature of course based on the TV series began over two decades ago.

Was last seen with a number of specials through the 90s and the early part of the 2000s. The last one being in 2012. After months and months of delay the WWE has announced their network will be launching both in the United Kingdom and Ireland during this month. The network will be available for just about $15 US in the UK and for about the same amount in Ireland as well. The official kickoff date for the launch will be January 19th.

Just about every commercial break on regular television seems to feature a trailer for another upcoming movie. So I wonder how much they spend on those. Well last year alone trailers cost studios a little over three point three billion dollars for those to appear on television. And what movie spent the most wealth or 2014 that honor went to Godzilla racking up an ad bill of about sixty one point eight million dollars. Also on the top 10 list X-Men days the future past the Lego movie Neighbors and 300 Rise of an Empire.

The TNT drama series the librarians actually began as a series of made for TV movies almost a decade ago. After three films it all evolved into the regular series which now has a new cast of characters including Rebecca Romaine who told me what the core of the show really is. Well our job is to run around the world and collect dangerous magical artifacts to keep them out of the wrong hands. And there are all these people chasing us and in pursuit. And so I am sort of there to fight them off.

And her role? I play Colonel Eve Baird a counter terrorism expert in the military who's an investigator and I get invited to work at the library. I don't know why I don't necessarily want the job but I've received this mysterious invitation and I am the guardian of the librarian. He doesn't want me either. No while his character doesn't want me around.

And then we discover that the librarian and the librarians in training are all in danger of being killed off. And so I become the guardian to the librarians in training as well. Now you need to understand that not all the characters join in this adventure willingly as explained by Christian Cain. Without giving too much away we're all kind of forced into this thing. So we really don't know what's going on.

And that's the beauty of it is we all have sort of special abilities but they're not magic abilities. Some of them become magic because of the world we get thrown into. But we're all finding out what magic is. We didn't even know it existed and all of a sudden we're thrown into the library. And of course Noah Wiley's character Flynn Carson he is.

He's been there. He knows all this stuff. So it's just second. It's back of hand to him. It's a whole new world for us. And so that's what I love about this show is the fact that not only are we jumping into this world again to take this journey. That's what John Rogers is so he's so brilliant when it comes to creating that.

He takes you in the living room. You know what I mean. Like he takes you takes you along with us. So you're taking this journey with us. I think that was a great thing.

That's why I love to work with him so much on leverage was the fact that the audience you know everybody everybody sitting at home was part of the team. I mean there was there was it was a five man team but there was also one more person which is the person watching the show. And John's been brilliant with doing that with leverage and now he's done it again with the librarian. So you're taking this journey even if you're a fan of the show and the show's been around for the movies have been around for 10 years. He's still walking you along with us.

And so you get to enter this whole magical new world with us. And I just I appreciate that working for a showrunner but an unbelievable writer like Lindy Booth plays a character with an unusual ability that really isn't far from reality. Cassandra is a sinister. And what that means is all of her senses are sort of crosswired in her brain. So she sees numbers as colors science music.

Now it's not like breakfast. So it's all sort of crosswired and it is a real thing. And I did a lot of research about it because I couldn't believe that it was a real thing. And the funniest one was I was talking to a friend of mine and I was like oh I'm going to play this character set synesthesia. He's like what does that mean.

Well it's you know she sees numbers colors and she's like oh why do that. I was like what do you mean you do that. And I was like that's a thing. And I was like yeah it's a thing called synesthesia. He was like I had no idea that was like not a normal thing but it's an actual special thing.

And so like people have this and Cassandra does have a very extraordinary version of it. Hers is much more extreme because it's television and we do things like that. But it's amazing. It's really it's a cool thing to sort of play with because it lets me play. It lets me sort of express things in different ways that you don't normally get to do with a character who just sees things through normal life.

Lindy explained to me that Cassandra is the one cast member that really embraces the whole quest. Yeah. Well I think one of these things that's really special for her is that she's seen it as a curse. And in her whole life she wishes she hadn't had this because to her she's weird. She can't make friends. Her parents sort of don't understand her.

So this is a curse. This is like the worst thing that could have happened to her. And when Flynn walks up to her for the first time and looks at her and says not only you're OK but you're exceptional. It's like the floodgates open and she's just like have I found my place in the world. This is a real place where I can go and not only be accepted but excel and sort of be myself for the first time. And she's the one that goes to it with the joy of like a child.

She goes to it and is like magic. What? What's so awesome? And so she is the sort of everyone has a different reaction because we're all very different people obviously. But Cassandra is the one that's sort of most psyched to be there.

She is like library magic relics. Awesome. Totally in. So do you need to see the films to enjoy the series? Not necessarily says Christian. You can jump right into it.

Yeah it's not like you know it's like those one of the things that I love this show 24. But that was one of the things if you miss an episode you're out and it's not like this. Plus I'm sure TNT will do a pretty good job of showing. Especially since it's actually airing on the day 10 year anniversary of the first librarians movie or librarian movie. You'll be able to catch up if you want to but you don't have to.

That's what's saying. It's a brand new show and you're going to enjoy it. New episodes of the librarians every Sunday on TNT. And catch up right now at TNT drama dot com. Good point.

And as for the podcast you know the drill. We're back in a few days on ComicMix dot com. Michael Davis World dot com. Get the point radio dot com and the iTunes podcast directory. We'll look at the new sci-fi series 12 monkeys can't make it from movie the TV and a lot more of course in the meantime find out what we're up to on Instagram Facebook and Twitter under the point radio.

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