Captain America Cast Talks The Winter Soldier

By: Lynn Barker

Kidzworld went to Beverly Hills to mingle with Marvel superheroes Captain America, Black Widow, their boss Nick Fury and new enemy Winter Soldier (otherwise known in the “real” world as actors Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson and Sebastian Stan).

The gang “got real” on a variety of subjects including their training, comic book reading as kids, action scenes, the emotional core of the film’s story and how their characters grow and change for the better in this second “Cappy” movie.  Check it out!

Kidzworld: Scarlett, it was very interesting to see a more humorous side of your Black Widow (Natasha) character in this film. How do you think she has changed? This is the third time you have played her.

• Scarlett: I think this is the first time that we’ve really gotten to really see Natasha. We saw a little bit of her in Avengers and we saw a bit of her back story. We’ll see more of that in Avengers II, but in this film, we really get to see Natasha as a person who gets up, gets ready for work in the morning and has a life outside of just her job once she’s out of the suit. She has her own kind of reality outside of this.

• Steve (Captain America) and Natasha kind of question their own identity, realizing that they thought they were pretty strong people that had their beliefs or whatever but, at the end (of the film) they think, “I’ve been this sort of hired hand for (S.H.I.E.L.D.) my entire professional career and young adult life but who am I and what do I want and what do I need from someone?”  So both of these characters are kind of left cresting the wave of having this huge moment of self-discovery. I think we’ll be able to track where that goes in the next installments.

Kidzworld: Cool. Chris and Scarlett, this movie is full of people with “trust” issues. Almost everyone is wondering “Who can I trust?”. Do you two have personal trust issues? What must someone who might want to be your friend do to make you trust them?

• Chris: Oh man! They always offer money.  No! Well, it takes time, you know, and it takes experience (with them). You need to earn trust and that’s not something that happens overnight. 

• Scarlett: I trust no one. No! I only trust whoever Sam Jackson trusts.  That’s my barometer right there.  I don’t think people have to prove themselves in order for me to trust them.  I think I’m mostly trusting by nature and usually, I guess I wait for people to prove me wrong and then I don’t trust them after that.

• Chris: You start with an “A”.

Kidzworld: And then they might end up with an “F”.

• Scarlett: And you never get it back.  Yeah, once I don’t trust you, you’re out of the circle.

Kidzworld: Sebastian, how did you grow to understand your Winter Soldier “baddie” character? He had to change a lot since the last movie (when he was just Steve’s pal Bucky Barnes).

• Sebastian: It was actually pretty simple, because the Winter Soldier’s very direct and he follows on this very specific trajectory path which is pretty much automatic, receiving orders, carrying them out and don’t stop at anything until you achieve your goal, so I feel it was probably more complex for the other characters honestly than what I had to do in the film.

• Most of the work on the character, I had done before the first film, when I was first educated about it. It was a different version of the character in this film that we were introduced to in a certain way. Still, at the end of the day, I was trying to walk away from it having left some type of mix of the new character with some of the old aspects that you would sort of remember when you would see it in its entirety.

Kidzworld: Scarlett, is Natasha a fun character to come back to?  Does it feel very comfortable coming back to her?

• Scarlett: Yeah, it’s an interesting challenge to keep coming back to this character and I have the good fortune of playing a character that’s evolving with each installment that you see her in. I have to understand who this character is and where she comes from and have this rich back story and I think the exciting thing is just scraping away at a little part of that each time to reveal a small part of the bigger picture of her.

• She is very complex character, which is wonderful for me, because over the period of time that I’ve played her, I’ve also grown (as a person) obviously. It’s been like six years and you grow in your career, your work, your life, so I feel that the character’s story is more enriched as my own experiences are.

Kidzworld: Natasha is such a strong female character. How do you feel about her being a role model for girls?