An everlasting love for Agent Phil Coulson
Actor says Marvel fans enjoy his role because his character has plenty of heart
It’s a glimpse into the secret thoughts of a Hollywood character actor.
It comes after Clark Gregg is asked whether he ever imagined that his role as Agent Phil Coulson in 2008’s Iron Man would become what it has become: a career-defining turn that has lasted 10 years, five blockbusters (and counting) and a five-season TV show.
The short answer is no. But Gregg is quick to point out this is not due to any sort of false modesty.
“Character actors, supporting actors, we are capable of some very grandiose fantasies when we’re sitting over there having the doughnuts,” says Gregg. “‘I think they just decided to make the whole movie about me! That would be cool!’ But I never ever, even with that derangement, imagined that they would even expand the one or two scenes that were originally in Iron Man to five times that.”
It was an auspicious start for Gregg’s Agent Coulson. The actor would go on to play the role in blockbusters Iron Man 2, Thor and the Avengers and in ABC’s long-running series, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Thanks to some digital de-aging, he’s playing him again on the big screen in Captain Marvel as a young agent from the 1990s, a wide-eyed rookie long before his rise up the ranks of S.H.I.E.L.D. It’s been a strange and occasionally convoluted history, with the character proving surprisingly resilient. As fans know, he has died at least once. Maybe twice. Puzzlingly, rumour has it Gregg is set to return for a sixth season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., albeit perhaps not as Agent Coulson.
But in Captain Marvel, all that history is still in front of him. While the film is an origins story about Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel, it also establishes the origins of Coulson’s relationship with Nick Fury (played by Samuel L. Jackson, also digitally de-aged.)
Brie Larson’s titular superhero is a intergalactic Kree warrior who can’t remember her past. She is part of an elite squad whose war with another alien race brings her to Earth in the 1990s. Youthful agents Coulson and Fury from the then fledgling espionage agency S.H.I.E.L.D. are the first to investigate this warrior.
“They were like: ‘So, listen, it takes place in the ’90s, but we’re going to get you a trainer,’” says Gregg with a laugh. “I said ‘There is no trainer that can make me look like the 1990s.’ They said ‘Don’t worry, most of it is going to be digital.’”
Whether young or older, on TV or the big screen, Coulson has proven to be a fan favourite in the ever-expanding Marvel Universe. Gregg has his theories as to why. The Boston-born actor, who had a long history on stage and screen as a character actor, writer and director before taking on the role of Coulson, seems touched when told that a cheer rose from the audience in the press screening of Captain Marvel when his character first appeared.
“I think he is the audience, I think he is their window in,” says Gregg. “It’s a world of either superheroes or super-talented, extremely special people and the thing he’s got going for him is, he may have some skills, but it’s really his heart. And I don’t think his sardonic wit has ever been a problem for anybody. So I think he’s been the audience’s avatar.”