We recently had an engaging conversation with Brett Dalton from Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Tuesdays at 8pm ET on ABC) who discussed everything from his love for comic books to where the series is headed. Here’s part 2 of our Q&A with Dalton who plays Agent Grant Ward.
With the exception of Clark Gregg’s Agent Coulson, who appeared in several Marvel films, most of your show’s core characters were created specifically for the TV show. Has it been liberating to help create new personalities and stories, as opposed to adapting or continuing the legacies of characters that fans had already seen?
Brett: Actually, I think there were a lot of firsts in general for this. This is Marvel’s first foray into television, and it’s Marvel’s first collaboration with ABC. It’s the first time a show is about the “other guy,” not the superheroes themselves. There are superheroes who are mentioned or sometimes visit for a second or there’s some footage, but this isn’t a show about superheroes. It’s about not how all heroes are super. I think it did free us up in a way. It allowed Joss Whedon to do what he does best. It was a blank slate, in a way. There were certain ingredients in this formula that we knew would work, but the rest of the stuff was up to the creators to do … they’re alchemists. They know how to put the right ingredients together and I think that what we have now is gold. It’s a really good show and just to continue with it metaphorically, we’re just polishing it more and more as we go.
RELATED: Part 1 of our interview with Brett Dalton
As your fight scenes evolve and grow, have you been training and learning new techniques throughout the season?
Brett: We try and keep up on it, but we’re doing so many fight scenes that there isn’t a lot of downtime between one fight from this episode and another fight scene in the next episode. I’m not sure if there’s an actual fighting style that we use, but the emphasis definitely seems to be on close hand-to-hand combat and self-defense techniques … because that’s what a “S.H.I.E.L.D.” agent would most likely be trained in. I think we’re starting to use our environment more as well, as we did actually did in the pilot, with using the blender to smash that in the guy’s face. That’s what I think makes it really cool and exciting because that’s somebody really using their environment, and trying to be as efficient as possible to get the job done.
Coming from a theater background, was it tough to make the adjustment to performing for cameras?
Brett: Yes, it was. In theater, they really do teach you to command the stage. It’s just you up there, and so you have to use your whole body. There is nothing more boring than a talking head, so you have to command the stage and take over the room. At the same time, I feel like there are a lot of similarities between the two. You’re actually doing the same amount of work, you’re asking the same questions in the text, and a lot of the work is quite similar … the manifestation is just smaller. It’s a really hard thing, for actors coming from a theater background. I feel like the hardest thing is letting go and trusting that just thinking those things is enough, instead of trying to indicate or trying to telegraph what you are thinking so that the person in the back audience knows. It’s really just a matter if making sure that that character is always thinking and responding and really listening. The camera picks it all up … so, yeah, that was probably my biggest adjustment. You don’t have to communicate what you’re feeling to the camera and try and make it bigger than what it is. It is what it is, and the camera will catch it all.