Sebastian Stan is "11 years into" playing Bucky Barnes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as he told Collider's own Steve Weintraub during an interview in support of his new movie Monday. But he still has nothing but gratitude for the experience. And most importantly, his bosses at Marvel Studios, including and especially mega-producer Kevin Feige, have nothing but gratitude either.
Stan gushed openly about the joys of working with Feige and Marvel to us, especially as it relates to his latest enterprise, Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: "I have nothing but complete, utter gratitude for the opportunities that I've gotten from him. And especially just also that Anthony [Mackie] and I have gotten, now with the show again, on my end, to yet again reinvent this character, find new nuances about him. So it's already kind of a win in so many ways for me."
As for a chance for Feige to reinvent himself, Stan straight up asked him, "'Hey, how do you feel? Wouldn't you wanna direct one or something one day?' And he was like, 'It's for better people to handle that.'" Feige has, indeed, found himself an excellent collection of filmmakers to work within the MCU, and Stan opined to us that this is an extension of his positivity and humbleness in his work:
"I think one of the things about him that I feel like I've loved always is how modest he is, and how he really is unbelievably grateful when something works. 10 years in, 11 years, how many years now, I feel like that childlike exuberance is always there. You see the flicker in his eyeballs as he lights up, and when you talk about a character he loves. Or [when he says], 'Hey, by the way, they really love this.' I think he's in love with what he does, and I think that's a big part of why there's a consistent passion there from him to always find interesting ways to tell the story that make sense. I dunno, he doesn't get a lot of credit for that, actually, I feel like. I thought WandaVision was a really big fucking creative take. And you know Loki's gonna be its own thing, right? And again, our tone is very different because we were in the tone of the movies, and it's a much more grounded way. But again, now we're developing this sort of buddy comedy aspect to these guys. There's comedy to this Winter Soldier character that never was there before. And [Feige is] a people's person, he surrounded himself with the best. And his thing is always, the best idea wins. There's no ego there, man, and you know that's a huge, huge, huge thing."
Stan believes that a lack of ego is part and parcel of the Marvel attitude toward their work and possible future installments: "My impression is that nobody's over at that studio getting caught in the noise. They just love the work. They're just always constantly grateful. Which if you look at the movies, a lot of the endings of the movies [are] like, 'Well, this could be it, but maybe we'll get lucky and we'll get another one!' There's never been, 'Well, yeah, we're Marvel, we'll just fucking hit another home run.' There's always this thing of embracing the last film for what it is and the hope of a continuation without expectation, and that's very difficult to do at that level."
Speaking of not expecting another home run right after the previous one, we asked Stan whether he's heard anything about a Falcon and the Winter Soldier Season 2, and he had to admit, "No, we have not, and I'll tell you that honestly, we have not. As per usual, I don't quite know what the next step is. We never really do. Maybe some people do, maybe [Robert] Downey [Jr.] used to know, I don't know." But if we do wind up getting a Season 2 after these six episodes, Stan told Feige he's down for whatever: "I got on the phone with him just to catch up, and I was saying to him, 'Dude, you could fucking tell me to go swim under[water], I'll do anything.' It doesn't matter. Or if this is it, my heart is just as big."
Be on the lookout for our full interview with Stan soon, so your heart can get just as big.