Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
When Marvel’s Luke Cage debuted on Netflix on Friday, viewers were introduced to a bold new world of storytelling. The series blends the Marvel universe together with the history of Harlem and cribs from The Wire, Belly, and classic Westerns for its style. We spoke with the show’s creator and showrunner Cheo Hodari Coker ahead of the big premiere and saved the most spoiler-y parts of that interview for today. Now that the dust has settled — and you’ve binge-watched (at least the first seven episodes of) the show — we can reveal the inspiration behind those Iron Man 2 Easter eggs, the history of the Stokes family, and what Coker is most proud of.
***MARVEL’S LUKE CAGE SPOILERS AHEAD***
Even though you don’t need to know a thing about the greater Marvel Cinematic Universe to enjoy Luke Cage, it is ironically the Netflix Original series that offers the most shoutouts to the films and other shows. Whether we’re watching Daredevil‘s Turk play chess in Pop’s or seeing kids sell bootlegs of “the incident” (aka the final act of The Avengers), it’s clear that Luke Cage lives in the same universe as The Punisher and Captain America. Still, Luke Cage went further than any other Netflix show yet! It directly namechecks Iron Man 2 supervillain Justin Hammer as the arms dealer of the streets. (Bonus points if you remember that all of Iron Man’s surviving adversaries wound up at Seagate Prison.)
The only thing weird about that? The state of the Marvel Cinematic Universe was up for debate last year when Marvel Studios and Marvel Entertainment (the TV side of the company) went their separate ways. So was Coker trying to fuse the two back together?
“Well ultimately regardless of Marvel film versus Marvel television…it’s all one big family,” he said. “I had a��desire that it all feel like the same world, even with changes. Like rather than have it be some random arms dealer — the whole Justin Hammer level shit was just kind of a cool way of saying, ‘Okay, if there was an underworld of arms, and you couldn’t get bootleg Stark arms, you’d would go Justin Hammer.”
When I asked Coker if he wanted to do a Heroes For Hire storyline in future seasons, he said, “We’re not treating it as a one-off, and I’m confident people will dig the show, but, trust me, like Season Two, I’ve got a few ideas. But we really won’t get ready until Netflix sees the viewership, and hopefully the subscriptions that will come from this show, and then they’ll say, “Let’s get into it.”
“One of the things Jeph [Loeb] wanted to do with Netflix is have it be like a comic book. You could introduce a character one place and have that character evolve over the course of all the shows. That’s really what happened with Rosario Dawson. You’ve seen a lot of her in Daredevil and also in Jessica Jones, but really in this show is where she really fully blossoms as a character. That was really one of the great joys of doing this show is the fact that we have strong female characters that aren’t foils,” he added.
Coker said, “Really one of the things I’m most proud of is not only did we have a very diverse writing staff, at the same time, we also have strong female characters.”
Episode 7 gives viewers a glimpse into the bloody, dysfunctional ties that bind Alfre Woodard‘s Mariah Dillard and Mahershala Ali‘s Cornell “Cottonmouth” Stokers. “It was so fun to plot!” Coker said of the brutal flashbacks. “If I could ever do a spin-off of Luke Cage, I would do the Stokes family. It felt like a different world. With LaTanya Richardson – who is actually Samuel L. Jackson’s wife — she is so good as Mama Mabel! It was really great seeing that scene.”
Coker insists that he didn’t intend to link Dillard to any specific real-life politician, but he did look to history and hip hop for inspiration. He said he told Woodard, “‘Imagine if Maxine Waters and Suge Knight were cousins,’ and then she laughed and said, ‘Now wait a minute because Maxine’s a friend of mine. Don’t go there!’”
“What I explained was I said, “Look, the same way Madame Queen was a contemporary of Bumpy Johnson — because that was one of the things that I really wanted to do with our villains – I wanted them to have historical counterparts. For example, Cottonmouth has a little bit of the legend of Nicky Barnes, as well as Frank Lucas and Bumpy Johnson, mixed into a fictional character. To have a strong woman who’s kind of like playing both sides — it wasn’t based on any politician — but Madame Queen is what I thought of,” Coker said.
CLICK HERE for PART ONE of our INTERVIEW WITH CHEO HODARI COKER
