Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
We’re still over a month away from the premiere of Marvel’s Luke Cage, but fans are already in a frenzy. After conquering San Diego Comic-Con, star Mike Colter was on hand at TCA. We caught up with him at a Marvel event over the weekend and asked him about what we can expect from Luke Cage’s moment in the spotlight.
The most recent trailers for the series have suggested that Luke Cage, the bulletproof man clad in only a humble hoodie, is tailor-made to be a hero in the age of Black Lives Matter. We asked Colter if he was concerned that this tone might not connect with certain less-than-progressive parts of the audience.
“I think what’s true of most projects that I enjoy is that they stay true to the world that they’re in,” said Colter. “I like Woody Allen. Woody Allen doesn’t have a lot of black characters [in his films], but I’m not looking for black characters. I’m looking for the fidgety, interesting kind of quirky characters that he puts in his films because that’s something I’m interested in seeing and exploring. I want to know what that’s like. I watch that as a bit of a voyeur. I’m watching it from the outside and I don’t know that world, but I’m very interested in it. Hopefully people can enjoy our world in that way, too.”
The latest trailer also teases quite a bit of action. We already saw Luke Cage brawl a little in Marvel’s Jessica Jones, but what was it like storming down a hallway, bullets ricocheting off of him?
“It’s cool. It’s hard work because you’ve got to do it a lot more than once,” he said. “It’s like a boyhood dream. You imagine stuff, you think you can do it, and all of a sudden, you get people with a crew who go, ‘We’re going to make you look like you can actually do it. This is an expensive, childhood dream.”
Luke Cage showrunner Cheo Hodari Coker has already talked at length about how important music is to the series, so we asked Colter if he had a favorite song from the show’s soundtrack.
“Well, I had some ideas that I wanted to impart on Cheo, but he’s a musical expert and I think what he’s chosen is great. I definitely enjoy the Ol’ Dirty Bastard version of ‘Shimmy Shimmy Ya, Shimmy Yam, Shimmy Yay.’ I still have it in my playlist right now. I know that album back and front, so I was thrilled.”
