A lot of the Marvel Disney+ series have brought something new in their own way, but She-Hulk: Attorney at Law stands out as the MCU’s first true comedy.
With a lot of fourth wall breaks and laugh-out-loud moments, it isn’t something that we’ve seen from a Marvel project.
The half-hour legal comedy stars Tatiana Maslany as Jennifer Walters/She-Hulk, “an attorney specializing in superhuman-oriented legal cases—must navigate the complicated life of a single, 30-something who also happens to be a green 6-foot-7-inch superpowered hulk.”
Shadow and Act spoke to Maslany, co-star Ginger Gonzaga, head writer Jessica Gao and director Kat Cairo ahead of the series premiere.
“I always find it freeing to kind of start something new because there’s no blueprint…you can kind of do whatever…you get to be the one to kind of push into this new territory,” head writer Jessica Gao said about the show. “And since I come from TV comedy, it’s very comfortable. For me, it was more about pulling Marvel into this space that they’ve never been to that they weren’t completely comfortable or familiar with.”
From the jump, She-Hulk is also a different kind of hero that we’ve seen, and it’s not only because Walters retains her same personality when she hulks out.
“I think because she resists being a superhero and she sort of doesn’t engage with it in a way– she sort of fights it the entire show,” Maslany explained to S&A. “She wants to pursue the life that she had set out for herself and this thing that happened to her feels like a distraction from that. It feels like it’s not the life she wanted. I think what’s also interesting is that she stays the same when becomes She-Hulk, she doesn’t lose her consciousness. So it’s really about how the outside world sees her [and] that tells her who she is, and she’s contending with this very vocal, very noisy, outward voice that’s telling her stories about herself.”
And many people don’t realize that She-Hulk was the original fourth-wall-breaking character in the comics, not Daredevil–so of course this would be applied in the transition to live action.”
“Part of the essence of the character of She-Hulk is this woman with a very heightened sense of self-awareness,” director Kait Coiro told us. “Her breaking the fourth wall was always a little bit about controlling her own narrative and giving you a wink, like ‘I know what’s going on. And I have a hand in this.’ So that was baked into the project from the very beginning. In terms of how much we used it, there were definitely a lot more instances that we shot, but we always knew that we were going to have to find that balance. So we shot more, and then we would pepper them throughout. The balance was about how do we draw the audience in with these fourth wall breaks and make them feel connected, but also not do so many that we alienate them from the story in the world that we’re building and the characters of her family and friends.”
Watch the full interviews below:
