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Following Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, the expansion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe into television will continue this winter with Marvel’s Agent Carter, airing on ABC. Hayley Atwell will reprise her role as Peggy Carter from the Captain America films, in a series that picks up in the 1940s, after World War II had ended.
Serving as executive producers and showrunners on Agent Carter are Michele Fazekas and Tara Butters, the writing duo who created Reaper and whose credits include Dollhouse, Hawaii Five-0 and their current other job as showrunners on ABC’s Resurrection. Fazekas and Butters will steer Peggy's story, beginning with a pilot episode written by Captain America: The Winter Soldier's writing team, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely.
I spoke to Fazekas and Butters about their approach to Agent Carter, how it fits in with the events seen in the well-received Carter short seen on the Iron Man 3 Blu-ray and why they’re excited about the show’s eight-episode order, which will have Agent Carter running in SHIELD’s timeslot in the middle of the season, while SHIELD takes a break.
IGN TV: Peggy Carter is established as this great character, but when we start this show, where's she at?Michele Fazekas: Did you see the short?
IGN: Yes.Fazekas: Okay, so the short really is the basis for the series. So she's working at SSR, post-war -- so it's post-war, post-Captain America. As far as she knows, Captain America's dead. So that's where the world lives.
IGN: How will that work with the short, because I think I’ve heard it kind of takes place in between? Does the short still exist, or are you going to be telling a new version of that?Fazekas: If you think of the short as sort of the end of the series, the series would be leading up to that moment where she gets assigned to SHIELD.
IGN: That leads me to some questions about the supporting characters. There are some people we saw in that short and we've heard Howard Stark mentioned as being a part of the show. Can you talk about his involvement and also what other new characters might we meet?Fazekas: Um, can't talk about that. [Laughs] I don't know how much of the short will live in this series.
Tara Butters: I think that if you think of where this character is at post-war, kind of just with the history of it all, which is, you know, women were Rosie the Riveter and all of that, and after the war, it was like, "Get back in the kitchen."
Fazekas: Even if the characters aren't the same characters, I think it's sort of the same feeling of a woman in a man's world.
Butters: I think obviously there'll be some exciting people that you've seen before and new characters that populate her world. But what I like about her so much is it's very much a Marvel property. It will have all those things you saw in the short, but we will really get to explore the emotional character, which I think ABC does really well. It's a strong female character, and you're going to follow her emotional arc through these eight episodes, which I also think is really great.
IGN: I was going to ask about the eight-episode order, because that's obviously still unusual for a major network to do.Fazekas: Well, you know, we did Resurrection, which was eight episodes -- we're still doing Resurrection. Eight episodes is fabulous from a writing perspective. When you're breaking the spine of the season, it's a really nice number where you can plan it and know where you're heading. I think it's perfect for Carter. How we treat it on Resurrection is sort of how we're thinking about it on Carter, which is eight parts of a movie. So they're all connected. They're all they're own stories and they all have their own drive, but it's sort of building toward a big thing at the end of the eight episodes.
Butters: Also, it's just so much more manageable to come with a great eight-episode arc that we really hope will get the audience's attention. It's very hard nowadays to get the audience's attention. I think that it was incredibly smart, the way ABC and Marvel have set this up in that we're part of a wheel. The more new episodes that are shown, the less chance you're losing audience. I really believe that they are behind the project and are really going to put a lot of effort to get eyes on the show. That's worked very well for Resurrection, and I feel like it's a similar thing for Agent Carter.
IGN: I know better than to ask you "Tell me a list of Marvel characters we'll see on the show," but are you having fun with the possibilities? Because there are the ones already introduced in the movies, but there are also a lot of untapped, era-specific ones.Butters: Absolutely, and I think that we have a unique position, because we don't step on Marvel features, because of the time period we're in. It's been fun working with [Christopher] Markus and [Stephen] McFeely who wrote the pilot, and who wrote the movies.
Fazekas: And because this is a character from Captain America, the film side is really involved in this. I love them. They're great. They have great ideas.
Butters: There's a lot of synergy going on.
Fazekas: It's so interesting too, because I think the Marvel film side… You would think, going from film to TV, they're not very collaborative or they don't have experience in, like, a writers room, but they could not be more collaborative. If an idea is good, it doesn't matter where it came from, they don't hold onto to anything, and they're so enthusiastic about it. Markus and McFeely are going to be working on Captain America 3. I hope we can get them as much as we can in the writers room, because they're awesome. They're so much fun to work with. They wrote a great pilot.
Butters: We're just really excited to play in their sandbox.
IGN: What have your conversations been like with Hayley?Fazekas: She is game to do anything.
Butters: She's working out.
Fazekas: They were telling us that she, on the short, was like, "I'm doing my own stunts!" I feel like we're going to have to be like, "We don't want to hurt your face, so no?"
IGN: [Laughs] "People like your face."Fazekas: But she's so game to do anything. She's just a delight. We had another [event] and she was just talking to every single reporter from every single country, taking pictures. She's just ready to go. She's just really excited.
IGN: When do you guys start shooting?Butters: We start in September.
Fazekas: Yeah, and the writers room starts up in August.
Butters: So contact us later, and we'll have a lot more we'll be able to share. [Laughs]
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