‘The Falcon and The Winter Soldier’: Julia Louis-Dreyfus Joins as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine
Star Wyatt Russell and the filmmakers give us a glimpse into the latest character to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe!
The latest episode of Marvel Studios’ The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, “Truth,” finds John Walker stripped of not only his role as Captain America, but as a representative of the United States government and its military. He’s hit rock bottom, but not for long — enter Julia Louis-Dreyfus as the mysterious Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine.
It’s a mouthful, she knows. You can call her ‘Val’ but don’t call her ‘Val,’ just keep it in your head.
On Casting Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Marvel.com got to chat with executive producer Nate Moore and co-executive producer Zoie Nagelhout about bringing Julia Louis-Dreyfus into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
“What a gift for us to have her,” revealed Nagelhout. “She is just incredible. In the initial conversations between her and Kevin [Feige], she was just excited by the idea of joining this world and what it could mean to play a new quirky, weird, mysterious character. And she loved that there was this comedy to it as well because that's, of course, one of her great strengths. She was the perfect character to bring into John Walker's world to complicate what he’s going through and give him a weird almost ominous light at the end of the tunnel.”
“Julia has such range,” praised Moore. “She's only ever been great. There's something so likable about her that when she does show those darker tendencies to her character, it's a little bit more surprising and entertaining because you don't expect it to come from her.”
On Working with Julia Louis-Dreyfus
In addition to Moore and Nagelhout, Marvel.com also chatted with Wyatt Russell, who plays John Walker, about Walker's brief yet memorable scene with her in “Truth.”
“People like her make everybody better around them,” noted Russell before discussing their scene together. “What was great was in that moment, I didn't do any talking. I was just watching Julia Louis-Dreyfus act and got to be a sort of passenger. Because you're just letting Julia Louis-Dreyfus just be her. I was like an audience member. [She’s] hitting all the beats that she needed to hit and making it totally different than it was on the page, she was great in every possible way.”
The Beginning of the Moral Gray Area for John Walker
“It's the beginning of something,” stated Nagelhout. “John is really excited because he is someone who needs to have a purpose. He needs to feel like he has a place in the world. He needs to feel like he has direction and ambition. There's a catharsis to that [meeting] for him.”
"Whenever we talked about Valentina, even in the writer's room, she was sort of a more acerbic, funnier, but darker Nick Fury,” explained Moore. “Someone who knows her secrets, who's not afraid to operate in the moral gray area, but maybe who isn't as inherently altruistic.”
“Having a character like Valentina in the show, and actually in the MCU, is really interesting because I think she'll be making more waves sooner rather than later,” teased Moore.
Marvel Studios’ The Falcon and The Winter Soldier is now streaming exclusively on Disney+!
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