MARVEL’S AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. at TCA: Live-Blog

MARVEL’S AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. is the final session of ABC’s Television Critics Association day, and we’ll be live-blogging what the cast and executive producers have to say.

Be sure to follow along and refresh for the latest updates!

5:18 PM: “There will be as much as we can allow,” Joss Whedon says about whether there can be synergy between SHIELD and the upcoming Marvel movies.  But Whedon says the show has to work on its own and on the merits of the cast.

5:19 PM: “We will be dealing with the issue,” Whedon says of the mystery behind Coulson’s revival.

5:20 PM: The show looks good, but EP Jeffrey Bell says that is partially because the people who make it know how to get done. He notes that Marvel and ABC have been very generous with them.

5:21 PM: The EPs say they can nothing about David Conrad’s character or when he comes on.

5:22 PM: “We’ve gotten trust, which is different than freedom,” Whedon says of Marvel’s involvement with the SHIELD pilot.

5:23 PM: How much will Whedon be involved? “As much as an executive producer can who is also making a movie,” he says. But he also notes that he has the best team available, which is how a good show should work.

5:24 PM: Elizabeth Henstridge says she thinks it’s a great thing that the team has a bunch of different accents, since it’s a group of misfits who came together. EP Maurissa Tancharoen says the characters weren’t written in a certain nationality, so it didn’t matter where they came from. Clark Gregg applauded it because he says it makes sense that given what was seen in the AVENGERS movie, it would make sense the team was international.

5:26 PM: “Honestly, their biggest note was…[making sure] our investment in the characters and their evolution was as big as the case of a week,” Whedon says of ABC’s notes. But he says since that’s what he did on his former shows, it was basically like them asking him to do what he and his team normally does and not learn a new skill set.

5:28 PM: “My next to last day on the AVENGERS involved [being impaled]…I made jokes like is there going to be a rewrite coming?” Gregg says. Gregg says he heard that Coulson’s funeral would be involved in THOR 2 via a tweet, and he emailed someone asking about it and got no response. Gregg heard from Whedon four or five months after the AVENGERS and he explained how Coulson could still be alive, and Gregg was on board.

5:30 PM: “It’s so funny, because aside from being proud of my belly when I was pregnant with my kids, I am so proud to show off these guns,” Ming-Na Wen laughs about her muscles and getting to play kick ass.

5:32 PM: “I think it’s important everyone understand that Marvel is one universe,” EP Jeph Loeb says, whether it’s movie, TV, comics, etc. He also notes that there would never be a show about SHIELD sans Gregg.

5:33 PM: “I think their dynamic plays great,” Jed Whedon says of Fix and Simmons relationship/science banter. Tancharoen (Jed’s wife) says that they wanted the duo’s relationship to mirror her real-life relationship.

5:36 PM: “It’s just not something I feel or I’m aware of,” Gregg says of the pressure on SHIELD succeeding.  He says he was sure episode 2 would them being stuck in an elevator because they had blown all their money on the pilot, but he says that episode 2 is even bigger.

5:37 PM: Will J. August Richards be on the series beyond the pilot? “I can neither confirm nor deny if he’s coming back, but I thought he was great, too, so you do that math,” Whedon teases.

5:38 PM: Bell notes there are something like 5000 names in the Marvel universe, so if they’re trying to name a doctor or something that already semi-exists in that Marvel universe, they may plant Easter eggs to make it extra fun.

5:39 PM: “He’s a magnificent chain letter that began in IRON MAN” Gregg says of his character, which he did for his neighbor (Jon Favreau) and things started to click when he was on set with Robert Downey Jr. and that when Whedon took him on in AVENGERS, he brought out Coulson’s geek side, noting that “he’s a nerd avatar in this world.”

5:42 PM: “The goal is never about the medium,” Whedon says about what his next project might be. “I have no idea what the next one will be…I don’t have a particular ambition in any medium, I just want to keep telling stories.”

5:44 PM: Jed says the episodes will be a bit standalone, but there will be an overarching mythology. Whedon says it won’t be a new hero each week — it could be a device, it could be a mystery, etc. “We want to be able to change it up,” Whedon says.

5:45 PM: “I sort of like keeping secrets,” Brett Dalton says of all the secrecy. “I don’t know if that makes me weird, but I think it’s a great reveal. It wasn’t that difficult for me to keep a secret, but Marvel security made sure those secrets stayed on set like you wouldn’t believe.”

“It’s a good thing we like each other a lot, because we can pretty much only talk to each other,” Chloe Bennet says.

Loeb says what they’re trying to do is bring back some of the urgency on television. Wen says that as an audience member, she loves not knowing what’s happening.

5:48 PM: Whedon likes that they can tell the tale of the audience proxies to the superheroes, noting that this team may be extraordinary, but aren’t superheroes.

5:49 PM: Jed says he started working with brother when they were young kids, but they started professionally working together on DR. HORRIBLE’S SING-ALONG BLOG.

5:51 PM: “We have plans to travel internationally” Bell says of where the pilot will film. They shot a bit of the pilot in Paris. The executive producers refuse to disclose where the show is filming.

5:52 PM: “We’re not out to pull stunts,” Whedon says of the writers’ past history with using stunts for episodes (both ofn BUFFY and Bell’s history on X-FILEs)…he does allow though that “we definitely want to push our boundaries and give people new stuff,” they’ll only do what feels natural.

5:54 PM: Clark Gregg says that he will be releasing the first part of the SHIELD poster as soon as he gets off the stage, and when it gets 3000 RTs, Wen will release the next part, etc.