Chatting With The Fabulous Anthony Mackie About Captain America! #CaptainAmericaEvent

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Hey All!

I know by now you’ve seen the amazingness that is Captain America: The Winter Soldier. If not…What are you waiting for? It’s a fantastic film as you know if you read my review. The cast including Anthony Mackie as the Falcon does a fantastic job in this role. We had the opportunity to chat a little with Anthony about his role and it’s always fun to interview him! He’s the funniest and most down to earth celebrity I’ve ever met.

Here is what he had to say:

I have to say you were right at Comic Con when you said this movie was about kicking ass and taking names. When you found out you got the role and you worked with somebody like Hugh Jackman, who’s been working in a Marvel franchise for some time. Did call him up and ask him to give you any pointers?

Anthony:

No. I did not want to mess up my experience. I completely wanted to come into this naïve, ignorant and like my virginal eyes not knowing anything. So when I showed up it was like let’s do this. It’s funny because Sam has done like 15 Marvel movies. And Chris and Scarlett have done like 6 each. And you know, Sebastian has done 3.

So I was like don’t kill my vibe. I’m having a good time, we’re doing a Marvel movie, we get the best craft services. We’re in California. We basically shut down the city of Cleveland. So everywhere we went, people were like wow, I now know how Denzel feels, you know. I was soakin’ it up. I was really was. Chris and I have a very good relationship. And it literally got to the point where we would show up on set and we were like seven-year-olds. I mean, we had that first day where it’s like, deal with 35-year-old men in costume.

We’re losers and then the next day, you know, we started making fun of each other. And then it just turned into this thing, where it became infectious. Everybody thinks it’s fun when you go to work knowing you’re gonna make a quality product. Because as actors there’s so many people you work with who have daddy issues that mess up movies.  I’m gonna edit it this way or I didn’t have a girlfriend in high school so I’m gonna do this. And it’s like, Dude, just make a movie! Working with Marvel is one of those studios where you go to work and you know everybody leaves their stuff at the door. And they just want to make a good project. So you know, once we got over our suits, we had a good time.

What did you do to train and prepare for this film?

Anthony:

Uh, salmon, chickens, tunafish, asparagus. And a cup of brown rice at noon. Every day or three months. I did this in high school for high school football? When we play high school football we used to do these things called 2 a days. And basically six a.m. you wake up and you get ready, go to the gym for a hour. And you do cardio, just like Jane Fonda shit. And then you come home, and you just rest and eat every three hours. Knowing at 7 p.m. you go to the gym, and literally lift whatever you can find, you lift it for about a hour and a half. And then you go home and go to sleep. And then you wake up and do it again for three months. And it’s a lifestyle. You know, fitness is a lifestyle, you have to eat a certain way. You have to do a certain thing, you have to live a certain way. So you know, me and my homeboy Jack Daniels stopped talkin’. You know, no more pizza, like all the things I love.

Me and my girlfriend Haagen Dazs broke up. She French, it was crazy. So I had to contain myself. And then I show up and you know, Chris looks like a Greek god. And I’m feeling good about myself, I’m like Spandex ready, you know. And I show up and he’s like, Captain, you know, tiny ass. And I’m like, “Dude, how’d you get your ass that small?” And I’m like, man size. Like, errrrrrrrrrrrrrr I can lift the whole building. And I look at his tiny waist and I’m like, “What did you do, what did you do to it?” You know.

I put my costume on, everybody was like, “Damn, we got to let out here.” But I made it through it. I got together with my girlfriend Haagen Das aka Haggan Dyeesa. So yes it was a grueling three months.

What was it like to put on the costume for the first time?

Anthony:

It was great! The first time I put that costume on. I mean literally I couldn’t stop smiling, I was running around the room. It was  one of those moments where you know, you just have to allow yourself to enjoy it. At a certain point in time you just have to relish.  It’s like the first time I met Prince. Like I was like, he’s Prinice! I’m cool. Uh, uhhhhhhhhh. You know, you just have to allow yourself to be in the moment and enjoy it.

My costume took 45 minutes to get in it. It was like five minutes to get out it.  I really took every moment to enjoy being a super hero. So yeah, it was a good time.

What’s it like working with Scarlett Johansson?

Anthony:

Scarlett is just a regular chick. Like it’s weird, you expect her to be a diva or high maintenance or catty or need this.  But she’s a regular chick and she’s really low maintenance and cool and fun to be around. And you know, she just goes with the flow. I guess that comes with being talented, ’cause she’s extremely talented. So I feel like a lot of people compensate for not being talented with being bitchy. But she’s really talented. So she’s just like, “ Scarlett Johansson, let’s make it happen”.

Everybody’s like, “Oh, you’re Scarlett Johansson.” You know. That’s pretty much how the crew and everybody is just, she walks on a set and all the dudes are like, “Ahhhhhhhhhh.” You know. So it was fun, it was a lot of fun, she’s a very really down to earth, fun, cool, just regular chick.

How do you feel about not being the first African-American superhero?

Anthony:

It’s so cool. I feel like, you know, when I was a kid, I really didn’t have that, person I could look up to, other than my dad, and be like, “Hey, I want to be that guy and fly through the window.” You couldn’t be like seven years old and say, “Who do you want to be for Halloween?” “Shaft,” you know.

So you know, it’s really exciting. It always makes me emotional. I mean, when I first got this role I just cried like a baby because I was like, “Wow, next Halloween, I’m gonna open the door and there’s gonna be a little kid dressed as the Falcon.” You know, and that’s the thing that always gets me. I feel like everybody deserves that. I feel like there should be a Latino super hero, there should be a female super hero you know. I feel like Scarlett does great representation for all the other girls.

But there should be a Wonder Woman movie. I don’t care if they make 20 bucks, if there’s a movie you’re gonna lose money on, make it Wonder Woman. You know what I mean, ’cause little girls deserve that. There’s so many of these little people out here doing awful things for money, in the world of being famous. And little girls see that. They should have the opposite spectrum of that to look up to. You know what, I’m just trying to go with the flow with it. You know, like funny this story. There’s this craft store called Michael’s.

My sister knits. So she goes to Michael’s and every now and then I’ll go there for something. So my sister called me and she’s like, “Oh my god, I’m at Michael’s, picking up yarn” and “You have a poster at Michael’s.” I’m like, what? She’s like, “There’s a poster, there’s a Falcon poster at Michael’s.” I’m like, holy shit. She like, “I’m gonna come and pick you up, and we’re gonna see your poster in this store.” So I’m like, “Man, this is my oldest sister,” all right. So she picks me up. We get in the car, we go to Michael’s, we hurry up.

We get to Michael’s. We go in, and I see the poster and I’m like, “Oh, this is awesome.” She’s like, “I know, I know.” I said, “I’m gonna sign these posters.” I was like, “That would be amazing, you buy a poster and it’s like, actually signed by the Falcon.” Like, it would blow my mind. So I go to the front, I buy a Sharpie, I run back to the back of the store. And she’s like, “I’m gonna take a picture of you signing it.” So I’m in this store and I’m signing all the posters. The manager comes out, he’s like, “Hey, whatcha doing?” I was like, “Oh man, I’m signing these posters so when people buy ‘em, they’re signed.” He’s like, “Well, people are not gonna buy ‘em if they’re signed.”

And I was like, “No no no, it’s cool, I’m pretty sure there won’t be a problem.” And he goes, “Yeah, but it is gonna be a problem, you’re messin’ up my inventory.” And I’m like, “No, my man, trust me, I mean, that’s me!” And he goes, “Yeah, right. You’re gonna buy those posters.” I said, “What?” He’s like, “You’re gonna buy all those posters or I’m gonna call the police.” So fuck? I’m trying to get the posters for people to buy. “Let’s go to the front, you’re buying the posters.”

He rolls up all the posters and goes to the front of the store. And I had to buy like 60 Falcon posters that I signed in my Michael’s. So you all are proud recipients of the signed Falcon posters from Michael’s! So that’s kinda how — I’m just enjoying it. Man, I mean, there’s so many, you know, bad things that happen to us at entertainers and actors, that I feel like, when something good happen, you should take full advantage of it.

Nobody messes with my Anthony Mackie you hear that Michael’s! That’s so wrong that it happened to him! Lol.

The Falcon goes back to the ‘60s. Which versions of the Falcon did you go back to for the character to draw on?

Anthony:

You know, the Falcon is interesting because if you look at the Falcon, the reason I commend Marvel for putting the Falcon in this movie is, the Falcon’s history is something very unique in the comic book world. Usually in comic books they’ll introduce a character, if it doesn’t hit they’ll just let ‘em fall off into the sunset. But with the Falcon, Marvel made a unique choice to get him right. So he had about three or four different incarnations in the life of the comic book. So if you read like in the ‘60s, he was a drug dealer in Harlem, a hustler from Harlem, that moved to California and became a pimp.

The second incarnation, then the third incarnation where he became a military technician and, you know, a military expert. And then the Falcon that we know now. So as African-American culture evolved in America, so did the Falcon. And that’s very unusual, not only for the Falcon but for anybody or any character in any movie or anything.

So I tried to stay away from the source material because I felt like what the writers gave me with this was a very, you know, it’s the introduction of the Falcon. So whatever I give you, that’s who he is. For all the time in all the Marvel movies. So I just took what I had in the script, and worked primarily on that. I felt like the military history he had, and the relationship he has with Steve in this movie, is much more important than who he was in the comic books. Because I felt like if that relationship was grounded in truth and it worked, the rest of the movie would work. So I really just focused on, you know, that, you know, what exactly are the side effects and repercussions of PTSD?

How exactly do you overcome that? So a lot of my research came from soldiers I’ve met during HURT LOCKER. And doing charitable work with the Navy and stuff. So I just emailed a bunch of guys and got a lot of stuff online, a lot of videos. Lot of depositions with soldiers coming back and just talking about their experiences and where they are now. I just used that stuff and just tried to ground him in the history that was him, as opposed to the history that was the comic book.

At the end of the interview Anthony took small group shots with each of us because he’s so awesome!

I truly hope he’s in Avengers 2 cause Anthony deserves it!

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER is in theaters now! Run out and see it! You will love it!

For more info:

Like Captain America on Facebook: facebook.com/captainamericamovie

Follow Captain America on Twitter: https://twitter.com/CaptainAmerica

Photos Courtesy of Mom Start.

I was solely provided an all expense paid trip to attend this media event. All opinions are my own.