Check out high quality scans of Sebastian and Anthony Mackie on the cover of the May 2021 issue of EMPIRE Magazine in the gallery now.
Magazines & Publications > Empire Magazine (March 2021)
Category: Projects
EW.com — It was March 2014 when the cast of Captain America: The Winter Soldier assembled in London for the U.K. leg of their international press tour. For some, namely Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, and Samuel L. Jackson, this wasn’t their first rodeo with Marvel Studios. They knew their talking points and how to regale reporters at the press conference by swapping war stories and feeding off each other’s energy. Sebastian Stan, only on his second outing in the franchise, was more reserved. He offered warm smiles and laughed along with the group’s jokes, but kept his own responses somewhat brief. When asked about any on-set injuries that might have incurred, he said. “I honestly wouldn’t feel anything until I was in the car on the way home, when I couldn’t get out of the seat. But I’m sure we hurt each other.”
On his left, Anthony Mackie chimed in. “You didn’t hurt me,” he said in a soft, almost amorous tone as they locked eyes. This made the audience chuckle. Stan livened up, volleying back what Mackie served. “You?! This is the first time I’m seeing you,” he joked.
Mackie had inadvertently solved a small problem for the Disney publicists managing that tour. “They were worried that I didn’t talk a lot. I get very uncomfortable,” Stan admits to EW, Zooming in from Vancouver for a chat with his New Orleans-based costar this past January. “They’re like, ‘Just put him in with Anthony, okay? They’re going to talk.’ And I was talking!” he says. “By the end, I was very lively, and it really is thanks to him.”
Mackie agrees. “I’m the ketchup to Sebastian’s French fries.”
Stan can’t help but smile. “Way to put a button on it, and then some!”
Whatever the special sauce, it’s this playful dynamic between the actors that made Marvel want to center them in their own event series, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Premiering this Friday on Disney+ following the successful debut of WandaVision, the show sees Captain America’s two best mates — wise-cracking pararescue Sam Wilson (Mackie) and genetically enhanced super-soldier from World War II Bucky Barnes (Stan) — stomach each other long enough to face a global crisis involving a masked militia group and one Helmut Zemo (Daniel Brühl), the big bad from 2016’s Captain America: Civil War. As it happens, head writer Malcolm Spellman points to a scene from that film as “the moment this show was born.” Fans know it well: a cramped Bucky in the back of an old Volkswagen Beetle asking Sam, “Can you move your seat up?” Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios, also looks to the duo’s battle with Spider-Man later in Civil War, which offered an opportunity for more banter. “They’re so funny,” Feige says. “Those are the two moments that we [at Marvel Studios] would watch and go, ‘I want to watch that! I want to watch them together more!'”
As production ramped up on The Falcon and the Winter Soldier in Atlanta in October 2019, Stan needed reminding of that rapport. Again, he credits Mackie. “I think he had a much better handle on the temperature of the show than I did, because there are times where I was so scared and really trying to find the truth of everything,” Stan says. “He had to pull me back and be like, ‘Yo, just remember we’re going to have some fun, too!'” And that’s the show in a nutshell: a buddy comedy thrown in the middle of a high-stakes international thriller.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was once meant to be Marvel’s first Disney+ series out the gate, a show of force in the TV space from the masterminds behind one of the most successful Hollywood franchises in history. Though a scheduling shuffle and a production delay due to COVID-19 now has this premiering after WandaVision, the course for the six-episode hourlong series — as well as the entire Phase 4 slate — remains the same. The show is meant to set up what the world of the MCU looks like after the events of Avengers: Endgame. More specifically, it establishes what it looks like without Captain America. Steve Rogers (Evans), aged from his time-traveling adventures, chose Sam as his successor at the end of Endgame, but the Falcon notably remarks that the shield feels “like it’s someone else’s.” For Spellman, as a Black man, this was the essence of what he wanted the show to become.
“The idea of creating a series that features an African American superhero, and how he responded to that [moment], sparked a million ideas,” he says. It’s the thought “of exploring a decidedly Black, decidedly American hero in the current climate.”
“The show is very honest and forthright and very unapologetic about dealing with the truth of what it means to be American, Captain America, Black Captain America — and if that’s even a thing,” Mackie elaborates. “I think picking up from where we left off at the end of Endgame, the show progresses extremely well by asking those questions and really explaining why Sam said the shield feels like it belongs to someone else.”
Mackie doesn’t believe there is “a defacto Captain America figure” here. At least, not in the beginning. “I think the more important thing is, how do we now define the Falcon and the Winter Soldier? When you’ve been defined so long as an Avenger or a superhero, when you’re not that anymore, what are you?”
Marvel executive producer Nate Moore and co-executive producer Zoie Nagelhout met with multiple writers in search of a lead for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Spellman, who wrote 2010’s Our Family Wedding and episodes of Fox’s Empire, rose to the top of the list. He had “one foot in what would be required for a fun action series,” Feige says, “but also, being a Black man working in this industry, [he had] very specific points of view that are required to tell the type of story we wanted to tell for, specifically, Sam Wilson.”
The mandate, Spellman recalls of pitching the show, was “this cannot be TV.” Instead, he decided with director Kari Skogland and the writers’ room to make each episode “feel like an event, not just as far as the spectacle on the screen, but the way you tell the story.” Skogland says, “Everybody went into this saying we’re making a six-hour feature. We’ll break it up so ultimately it will look like television, but it will feel like a six-hour feature.” Feige did note on the virtual Television Critics Association press tour in February that these “shows are not inexpensive. The per-episode cost is very high.”
Mackie had some reservations, let’s say, about this approach when he met separately with Marvel months after Endgame. “I was horrified,” he says of “being a guinea pig for the first [TV] spin-off of a Marvel movie.” He continues, “You’re in this amazing franchise and everything works. The last thing you want to do is be the lead of the first thing that does not work, ’cause that’s 100 percent you. I don’t want to be the guy that destroys an entire Marvel franchise.”
He felt a bit more at ease when Feige caught up with him before the start of filming. “I won’t let you suck,” he promised his star. But it was watching the finished episodes and what Marvel did with WandaVision that boosted Mackie’s confidence. Now, the actor feels like “Marvel has revolutionized the game of cinema” by bringing “the scope and magnitude” of the big screen to the small one. “If Kevin says it won’t be s—, I would bank on that,” he says. Continue reading
You can watch the recently released featurette and clips above. The Falcon and The Winter Soldier premieres on Disney+ March 19th. You can find high quality screen captures from the videos in the gallery below:
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021) > S1 > Featurette – Screen Captures
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021) > S1 > Clip #01 – Screen Captures
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021) > S1 > Clip #02 – Screen Captures
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021) > S1 > Clip #01 – Screen Captures
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021) > S1 > Clip #02 – Screen Captures
The new Disney+ series, starring Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan, uses its superheroes to examine a world still on edge after a global catastrophe.
NYTimes.com — When Anthony Mackie got the call that the executives at Marvel Studios wanted to meet with him shortly after the release of the 2019 superhero blockbuster “Avengers: Endgame,” he figured he was either getting a new gig or getting fired.
But after several years and multiple Marvel films in which he had played Sam Wilson, that airborne ally of Captain America who is also known as the Falcon, Mackie was feeling optimistic.
“I’m walking in with the assumption that the next ‘Captain America’ movie is going to be me,” he said.
So Mackie traveled to the Marvel offices in Burbank. “I put on a suit,” he said. “I sit there like they’re about to tell me the best news I could ever get.” His ebullient voice receded ever-so-slightly as he continued: “Then they’re like, ‘We’re going to do a TV show,’” he said.
Beyond the fleeting dismay that he wasn’t being offered another film, Mackie said he was fearful that he wouldn’t be able to translate the Marvel brand to TV.
“I was taken aback,” he said, “mostly because I didn’t want to tarnish the Marvel moniker.”
This was how Mackie first learned of “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” the new Disney+ series that will make its debut on March 19 and continue the adventures of those two reluctant allies, played by him and Sebastian Stan.
Arriving two weeks after the finale of “WandaVision,” “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” is Marvel’s second show that seeks to extend the characters and momentum of its cinematic universe into streaming television. Its narrative mission is straightforward: to tell the next chapter in the story of its title characters, last seen in “Endgame,” after an aged Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) has retired as Captain America and given his shield to Sam Wilson.
In both its story and its subtext, this show asks, how can the Marvel franchise continue without one of its most prominent figures?
As Stan explained: “We’re going to explore where these two guys left off, with one big character missing — the prominent figure that brought them into each other’s lives. Where are they, and how are they coping with the world?”
“The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” consisting of six 45-to-55-minute episodes to be rolled out weekly, offers timely explorations into the nature of patriotism and extremism and the values of inclusivity, diversity and representation, set in a world striving for stability after a global catastrophe.
It is also a series freighted with implications for the Wilson character and for Mackie the actor, who, in a universe with precious few Black heroes, now have the chance to become full-fledged lead characters after long careers as sidekicks.
“I’ve gotten used to being the guy overlooked,” Mackie said. “It’s become part of my brand.”
The stage was set for “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” about two years ago, when Disney introduced its Disney+ streaming service and turned to its subsidiary studios for original content.
At the same time, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was arriving at a narrative turning point with “Endgame,” which said farewell to beloved characters like Steve Rogers while creating opportunities for new champions to rise.
Kevin Feige, the Marvel Studios president, said that from the outset, his company wanted its Disney+ programs to feel as significant as its movies in terms of their production values and of the characters and stories they included.
“As far as Marvel Studios is concerned, the M.C.U. now lives in features and in shows,” Feige said. “We really wanted people to get used to the idea that it was going to be a back-and-forth. The story will be consistent across it and just as important in both places.”
On your left! Empire’s new issue is an exclusive dive into Marvel Studios’ all-action superhero epic The Falcon And The Winter Soldier – chatting to Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Kevin Feige, Emily VanCamp, Daniel Brühl and more. On sale Thursday, March 18th.
You can Pre-order now!
(The link appears broken but keep checking it. Hopefully it will be fixed soon!)
Source: Instagram @EmpireMagazine
EW.com — Waking up naked and hungover on the beach next to a stranger after a booze-soaked one-night stand doesn’t exactly sound like the beginning of a beautiful love story — especially when it leads to getting arrested for indecent exposure. But when it comes to Monday, the steamy new movie starring Sebastian Stan and Denise Gough, it’s time to throw out any assumptions of what a traditional romance looks like. Relationships can start in the back of a cop car!
This is the first trailer for director Argyris Papadimitropoulos’ film that subverts expectations of what a movie love story looks like. Stan sheds his hard-edged, scowling MCU assassin persona Bucky Barnes — next seen in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier — to become the laidback and fun-loving Mickey, who meets the older and intriguing Chloe (Gough) at a wild party one night on a Greek island. Their magical weekend of drinking, dancing, and sex in public places plays out like a realistic and exciting fairytale. But when Monday morning rolls around, reality starts to outweigh the fantasy as Mickey and Chloe are reminded there’s not always a “happily ever after” in life.
“I was always excited and interested in love stories but I always wanted to explore when things go wrong in relationships,” Papadimitropoulos previously told EW of his fourth feature film, which he wrote with Rob Hayes. “Why do people become so different at some point when everything started like a dream?”
Papadimitropoulos knows moviegoers have seen the candy-coated, happy ending love stories in films many times before, so he wanted to take an honest look at what really happens with relationships — the good, the bad, and the ugly.
“The rom-com genre gave us some amazing films in the past but then again, you watch them, they’re entertaining, but it’s not true,” he said. “You don’t really believe what’s going on at the end. So we start the film like a romantic comedy but then let the characters develop the way they would in real life and have problems, bottled up feelings, things they hide from each other, skeletons in their closet, and see what happens when the reality of everyday life settles in. It’s great having an amazing weekend but then Monday comes with a reality check.”
Monday premieres in select theaters and on-demand on April 16.
The Captain America films are renowned for holding a mirror up to society, acting as parables for the modern world. Sure enough, as soon as Steve Rogers retired the shield and hung up his star-spangled boots, the world moved into uncharted, uncertain territory. Now, Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan face the task of continuing a legacy that’s been built on values of courage and responsibility. Add mateship to that equation and you have a pair of comic book heroes uniquely equipped to meet the challenges of our times.
MensHealth.com.au — Over the past decade I’ve felt a difference within myself. A change, a pull, a stirring. And as the Zoom call connects and my face pops up between Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan, my suspicions are confirmed: I’m a nerd.
Of course, I’m not alone. The slope to Marvel fandom is not only slippery, it’s one that’s claimed millions around the world in the last decade-and-a-half. It’s the original pandemic, a wave of nerd culture sweeping up millennial males, driven for the most part by the creative forces behind Marvel Studios.
Over the course of 23 films, the Disney-owned studio has brought the comic book heroes of our childhood to the big screen, intricately weaving together a saga that culminated in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, the highest grossing film of all time. Beyond their box office clout, these films have had a profound impact on popular culture. They’ve created superstars of their casts, spawned a new generation of fitness idols and provided a great deal of fodder for this very magazine.
Here and now, I find myself positioned between two of the linchpins of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (what us nerds call the MCU), trying my very best not to geek out. Maintain professionalism, don’t be a dork, do your job.
“How are you, boys?” I say, intentionally lowering my voice to mask my delight at the situation.
“Chillin’, ” says Mackie, stirring a tea in his mid-century-fitted living room. “Very, very excited,” adds Stan, juxtaposed in a cabin-style living room.
My inner geek stirs. So well cast are Mackie and Stan, that even their homes are reflective of their onscreen alter egos – Sam ‘Falcon’ Wilson and Bucky ‘The Winter Soldier’ Barnes respectively. To my relief, they’re both equally excited to be here, clearly relishing the opportunity to once again be back saving the world, and many others, in the process.
“They brought me back! I’m not fired!” says a jubilant Mackie. “Just don’t get fired, bro,” he urges Stan, as if immediately realizing the fragility of their future. “Just don’t get fired.”
“I just wanted to keep going,” reassures Stan. “I always want to keep going. I’m happy we got another round at it, however we got it.”
Mackie and Stan have once again joined forces as the titular characters in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, taking on villains in their very own Disney + limited series. This time around the stakes are higher, for both the characters and the real-world players backing the project.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is an ambitious move for Marvel, a studio renowned for taking large, and often extremely profitable risks within the comic-book genre.
The show extends the MCU beyond the big screen, a moved planned well before COVID-19 shut cinemas worldwide, although the current appetite for on-demand, short-form content has only built excitement for the delayed release of the series.
If the early buzz and the popularity of its first limited series, WandaVision, are anything to go by, success for Mackie, Stan and the entire MCU seems all but assured. The critically acclaimed follow-up to Avengers: Endgame has even provided an opportunity for more work for the two leading men, with the possible introduction of a ‘multiverse’ (an equally exciting prospect for MH, with the promise of infinite cover men).
“They keep me so in the dark about what possibly happens with these dudes,” says Mackie, on what he hopes for Falcon’s future beyond this particular project. “I would just be happy to be in another movie.” That should be easy enough. Just don’t get fired. Continue reading