Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell Disprove Doubters of Movie

There’s a scene in Jake Schreier’s Thunderbolts* where Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes ruins an illusion that Wyatt Russell’s John Walker has been trying to uphold. Walker proceeds to give such a vulnerable look to Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova that you might find yourself reevaluating how you feel about the disgraced former Captain America from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Disney+ series. It’s one of the many unexpected moments in, arguably, Marvel Studios’ most unexpected superhero tale to date.

Stan and Russell recently sat down with The Hollywood Reporter to discuss some of the other unanticipated components of the film, starting with Congressman Barnes, something that was first set up in Captain America: Brave New World. Bucky visited the new Captain America, Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), at a moment when he needed his friend most, and the then-former Winter Soldier had to cut their reunion short due to a “stupid” campaign fundraiser.

Well, Thunderbolts* picks back up with Bucky now elected and known as Congressman Barnes, and Stan likens his role to a retired athlete who is brought back by their most tenured team to serve as an ambassador. They don’t have a major impact on the team’s day-to-day, but it makes fans feel good to see their past icons hanging around still. However, as Thunderbolts’ marketing campaign reveals in the form of Stan’s homage to Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Bucky can only put the (non-brainwashed) Winter Soldier on ice for so long.

“He’s also had his own suspicions about [Julia Louis-Dreyfus’] Valentina, so I think [congress] is his way of trying to, in the legal and moral way, keep track of her. And then he realizes, ‘I can just do this in my way, the way that I’ve always done it [as The Winter Soldier],’” Stans tells THR in support of Thunderbolts’ May 2 theatrical release.

In December 2023, Russell teased to THR that Thunderbolts* would not be your tried-and-true Marvel superhero film, and it’s now come to light that the film is genuinely about mental health. Louis-Dreyfus’ CIA director, Valentine Allegra de Fontaine, has positioned a number of MCU loners and rejects — such as Yelena, Walker, Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) and newcomer “Bob” (Lewis Pullman) — to kill each other for her own nefarious reasons. But they instead decide to team up in response to the obvious setup.

Along the way, each antihero is forced to confront the most unpleasant corners of their mind, and Russell, as a former accomplished hockey player, was eager to disprove anyone who wrote Thunderbolts* off as just another superhero team-up. 

“We came to this as a group of people who were like, ‘Let’s make this our own thing, let’s make it great and let’s make people put their foot in their mouths,’” Russell says. “I have a little bit of an athletic background, so I was like, ‘Yeah, I want to make you eat your words if you’re like, “This movie’s going to blow, I don’t want to go see it.”’”

Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Stan and Russell also discuss the highly collaborative nature of the Thunderbolts set.

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Sebastian, we had a long chat at the start of the pandemic, and you made a point that Steve Rogers, by not passing on the shield to Bucky, gave his best friend the gift of starting over on his own terms. So is Congressman Barnes his way of trying things out because he now can? 

SEBASTIAN STAN Imagine a quarterback of a football team getting replaced or retiring, and then he keeps showing up even though he’s not playing anymore. And they’re just like, “Yeah, man, whatever you want to do. Don’t worry.” He just wants to be helpful in some way, and they give him a little pat on the back and go, “It’s so nice to have you here.” So that’s how I look at it. He’s just consistently trying to find a way to be useful, and maybe someone gave him the idea of trying [politics] out to still be around.

WYATT RUSSELL I like that analogy. 

STAN But it’s so out of left field that, annoyingly, he comes out of retirement and goes right back to what he’s only known. He’s also had his own suspicions about Valentina, so I think [congress] is his way of trying to, in the legal and moral way, keep track of her. And then he realizes, “I can just do this in my way, the way that I’ve always done it [as The Winter Soldier].”

Wyatt, during Monarch, you remarked to me that Thunderbolts has a level to it that goes beyond superheroics, and I never expected that to be a meaningful exploration of loneliness and depression. Is part of you shocked that you guys were able to tell this story? 

RUSSELL Yeah, a little bit. How do you go from making the kind of [Marvel] movies that you’ve seen the past 15 years — and knowing how most of those movies have performed — to then doing anything outside the realm of what you’ve known Marvel to be? It’s a departure in any way, shape, or form — and a risk. This type of storytelling isn’t often told in any superhero form. It’s much more like a team of people who are very good at what they do, and they’re fighting a bad guy who has some existential threat about him. The world’s going to blow up or people are going to disappear, whatever it is, and they need to stop him. But this is a bunch of people who have main character syndrome, and they have to come together as one team. They’re thrust into an environment where they have to be a team, but they don’t want to be, and that just makes for interesting people. 

But it was a challenge because this is not a primed movie. There are no characters in this film, really, that have their own stuff in the Marvel universe that much. It’s not Captain America, it’s not Thor, it’s not Iron Man, it’s not the Avengers. [Thunderbolts] is more of these misfit types. And that challenge that Kevin Feige gave Jake [Schreier] and this particular group of actors, it was like, “Hell yeah.” 

I don’t want to speak for everybody, but most of us didn’t make it by doing this. Everybody didn’t come to this as a young person and make it this way. I did weird TV shows for a million years, and David [Harbour] has been acting on Broadway [since 2000]. Sebastian had a whole career before he joined Marvel, and while he’s been a part of it for so long, he’s also done so many incredible things outside of Marvel. It has not defined him. Florence, same thing. 

So we came to this as a group of people who were like, “Let’s make this our own thing, let’s make it great and let’s make people put their foot in their mouths.” I have a little bit of an athletic background, so I was like, “Yeah, I want to make you eat your words if you’re like, ‘This movie’s going to blow, I don’t want to go see it.’” But then they see the trailer and they’re like, “This looks pretty good.” So I like that part of it.

STAN I’ve been lucky. On most of the Marvel films that I’ve worked on, the communication was always, “May the best idea win, whoever has it, be it the director, the actor, Kevin.” It’s always been very inclusive in that way, and [Thunderbolts] was really, really that way. They were really open to us bringing our input, and if we had a better idea of how we could say something, it was heard or, at times, even included in the movie. Florence had a lot of ideas that she brought: the jump at the beginning, and even the [beginning] costume, rather than appearing all heroic in a certain way. Lewis [Pullman] and David also came with a lot to offer their characters, and the fact that we had a lot of say in it contributed to some of the dynamic that we ultimately ended up with.

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Thunderbolts* opens May 2 in movie theaters nationwide.