‘She-Hulk’: Behind-the-Scenes of Jen Walter’s Dreamy Dates and Waiting for Josh’s Texts

At the beginning of Episode 7 of Marvel Studios She-Hulk, viewers are seeing a different side of Jennifer Walters. For the first time since meeting her, she’s happy.

At Lulu’s ill-fated wedding in Episode 6, Jen meets the dreamy Josh (Played by Trevor Slater) who wants to talk to Jen for Jen — he doesn’t care about She-Hulk (and yes, hold that thought…). Episode 6 ends with them sharing a plate of fries together, and the next episode picks up with the two of them starting to get to know one another over the span of a few dates. They wander around open-air markets, stop by food trucks, and head to a drive-in. No red flags detected! (At least…not yet.)

The opening montage perfectly captures that feeling of a blossoming new romance. “It's that excitement of this could be something. I don't want to be crazy, but it could be something,” the director of the episode, Anu Valia, explains to Marvel.com. “It’s that subtlety of dating, and how vulnerable you are when you're dating, but also the reality of what a gal does, which is try to be cool. The show really captures the subtly of that. Tatiana [Maslany] does a good job capturing that.”

Though viewers only see a few small snippets of Jen and Josh’s dates, the crew spent a few days shooting all the scenes. Valia, who comes from indie film, wanted to uncomplicate it as much as possible. To set the mood, Slater actually made a playlist for the scenes — one that Valia still listens to.

“I was like, just throw [Tatiana and Trevor] in the car, I'm going to sit-in the backseat, we're going to put some music on, and we're just going to drive around,” Valia continues. “I played music on my phone. They drove and I just was in the back seat. It was just the three of us in the scene. It was like we were shooting a different film or something. It was different, but it was really lovely. I was like, I can't believe this is part of She-Hulk. It was just a really nice experience.”

All these dates finally culminate in a kiss between Jen and Josh, but clearly, it took a lot to get there.

“What I love about that is it's like, ‘Oh, this is exciting, maybe we should kiss!’ Or, ‘Oh, we didn't, god, I'm such an idiot,’” Valia laughs. “All of that, you really feel it. That's another thing that makes me feel very close to Jen because I feel like she's vulnerable and I don't want to see her get her heart broken.”

However, Jen is faced with something worse than heartbreak: she’s ghosted. Driving up to deal with the Emil kerfuffle at his retreat, Jen is constantly checking her phone for messages from Josh. But nothing arrives, no matter how hard she tries to find service.

“That was something that [the creative team] all talked about a lot,” Valia adds. “I have felt that and you feel so crazy. And you know you're being crazy, but she's not. Tatiana understood that completely. It was so funny to be working on a show like She-Hulk and be dealing with these very micro-dating things. It's so annoying because she's a high-profile lawyer. Why does she care [about this guy]? It's so frustrating. Then when she goes to the wedding and Lulu's like, do you have a guy in your life? She's like, no, I have all this other stuff in my life, I'm happy. Being able to balance that, felt so real. That episode felt really down home like we're just with Jen. That's what it is, we're just with Jen.”

At the end of the episode, it’s unfortunately revealed that all along Josh was actually after She-Hulk — he’s part of Intelligencia and talking to HulkKing. Anu wants to state for the record that Slater “is just the sweetest human being,” but filming that final scene was hard.

“That scene was really upsetting. And it's a short scene. When we are filming it, I was like, I don't want to do any more tapes of this, it’s making me so uncomfortable. But Trevor couldn't have been more thoughtful and kind.”

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