Malcolm Spellman, whose work spans from the film Our Family Wedding to Empire and FX’s docuseries Hip Hop Uncovered, is the head writer for Marvel’s latest Disney+ entry, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. The series It’s only right that Marvel tapped a Black writer to helm the series which seemingly will go down the road of Falcon (Sam Wilson) taking on the Captain America mantle.
“We showed up through that lens,” he explained. “The room, I’m Black, most of my writers were Black. The exeec that they partnered with me from Marvel, Nate Moore, is Black. A lot of stuff does not surprise us because we have a particular connection to the pulse of the times. So I think like we were heading in a very, very relevant direction regardless. If you’re talking about a Black man confronting the stars and stripes, and you’re being honest, that already is going to plug you into those vibes. On top of that, we had already committed to an MCU that was coming right on the heels of what happened with Thanos with three and a half billion people disappearing for years and coming back, which spun the MCU into chaos. By the time we get started on this thing and COVID hits, the global pandemic is feeling identical to the MCU. And since we were already striving for relevance and striving for heroes, that really felt like they had, they were of the times, that just started to become a magical opportunity to just make this a future-forward a hero movie or a series and characters who feel like they are not only of the moment, but have experienced the same things as us.”
With WandaVision, fans went rampant with theories because of many Easter eggs in the show. Spellman teased similar easter eggs in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and says the partnership with Marvel allows such easter eggs and comic book gems to be embedded within the larger scope of the show’s drama.
“So I’m working with Nate and Zoe Nagel [and] Nate’s been at Marvel for probably over a decade. And what happens is it allows them to put you in a bubble and just create honestly, and the best you can without worrying about anything. Because as the series starts to take more shape and more form, you are partnered with someone who’s tethered to the greater universe and who understands the in a very, very deep way. And they help guide you to be respectful those fans and they help. That’s where you really, in my opinion, that’s where you get those Easter eggs like in WandaVision, because those [of] Marvel partners. Jac [Schaeffer, WandaVision head writer] has worked in this space longer than me, but those Marvel partners, they’re like encyclopedias. So they know how to play with that stuff in a way that is really, really unique.”
Spellman says that fans. may be surprised of the show’s level of action and how it is literally on par with the. films.
“This is not was not created by anyone who works in TV,” he explained. “This is created by the same people who bring you those big Marvel movies and they’re geniuses, and they don’t know how to do anything but one way. A friend of mine, [writer] Craig Mazin, after he saw the trailer [he was] like, ‘Did you guys just kill movies? ‘ So that part is nuts, but I think the other thing that’s really going to surprise people and I take great pride in this is the honesty of Sam’s journey. And for all the characters, the relevance they have to our times today. We were not unaware of how people feel in the real world. And these characters took time to be born from struggles that feel very, very similar to what we’re dealing with today.”
Watch the full interview, in which Spellman talks about. the specific tone of the series, doing a buddy comedy two-hander and more:
