‘Loki’ Interviews With Tom Hiddleston, Owen Wilson
The stars and filmmakers behind Marvel's Disney+ series, "Loki," including Tom Hiddleston (Loki), Owen Wilson (Mobius), Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Judge Renslayer), Wunmi Mosaku (Hunter B-15), Kate Herron (Director) and Michael Waldron (Head Writer) discuss their new show with CinemaBlend's Eric Eisenberg. Take an exclusive dive into the inner workings of the TVA and the God of Mischief himself as he wreaks havoc on the Sacred Timeline.
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00:00 Is it a rule that you'll only work with Tom Hiddleston
00:02 if there's time travel involved?
00:04 (laughing)
00:05 - It's a coincidence.
00:07 - Well, it is a rule and, you know,
00:12 our lawyers worked it out long ago,
00:14 but it's one that I'm glad that you've picked up on.
00:19 - The timekeepers have built quite the circus.
00:22 And I see the clowns are playing their parts to perfection.
00:27 (upbeat music)
00:29 (upbeat music)
00:32 - I first have to ask about Loki witnessing his own death
00:36 because that is such a monumental thing.
00:39 And I'm just, I'm curious how you even process
00:41 a moment like that as an actor.
00:43 - Well, that moment I would just was,
00:47 when I first became aware of that was
00:51 where the scripts are going, I thought,
00:53 what an extraordinary moment to inhabit.
00:59 And then of course you think,
01:01 what would it be like for me,
01:03 for anyone to sit and watch that?
01:06 And how would it then change your sense of yourself,
01:10 your journey through your own life?
01:13 You know, what you thought you had intended to do,
01:15 what your motivations were, what was important to you,
01:19 and then to see, oh, it ends there.
01:21 And it would be, yeah, it would be a hell of a,
01:27 it would be cause for concern, I think.
01:29 (laughing)
01:31 - That's so funny.
01:32 - Glorious purpose.
01:35 - It throws into question the whole root
01:39 of his sense of meaning in his life,
01:44 where he is derived meaning and what his purpose was.
01:48 You know, I think it's a really interesting question
01:51 just to think about is we all have to,
01:54 as we move through our lives,
01:56 we have to think about what we're doing
01:59 and why we're doing it and what we're working towards,
02:02 if we're working to, you know,
02:03 basically we want our lives to mean something.
02:06 And I think he's decided his glorious purpose
02:08 is a reason for kind of doing what he does.
02:13 And then I think that the whole thing
02:16 is called into question and he has a kind of,
02:19 kind of nervous breakdown, a kind of,
02:21 or at least a breakthrough,
02:25 where he is confronted face to face with himself,
02:30 his choices and the things he's done.
02:34 And yeah, I don't know, cause for concern.
02:39 - I think we tried to create a very intimate atmosphere
02:42 on set when we were filming that.
02:44 Like when we were filming on the memories,
02:45 I actually had them all on my laptop
02:47 and I was kind of DJing them from my computer.
02:49 But I just loved that scene.
02:51 I think the way Tom plays it and as he goes towards it,
02:54 it almost felt like how we all imagined or felt
02:56 when we sort of like, no, what the hell is going on?
02:58 And like, I think he really captures
03:01 that just complete horror.
03:02 And like you said, like, that's what it was for.
03:06 Like, that's what I got.
03:07 And I love the kind of,
03:09 there's this moment where you see him react
03:11 and we have almost like the focus slips,
03:14 but I kind of love it.
03:15 Cause I almost feel like it's kind of his feeling
03:17 on reality, like slipping around him.
03:19 And yeah, and then the end of file comes up,
03:21 which is so cruel.
03:23 And so again, in the mundane world of the TVA,
03:25 and I think, you know, he starts to laugh
03:27 cause what can you do?
03:28 You're gonna cry or you're gonna laugh.
03:29 So I think that, yeah, that moment for me is very chilling.
03:33 And it's, yeah, one of my favorite moments
03:36 working with Tom, definitely.
03:37 I just think he does such a beautiful performance.
03:39 So yeah.
03:40 - What a humbling thing to see how your life
03:43 was meant to play out.
03:46 You know, he says in the first Avengers, you know.
03:50 - An ant has no quarrel with a boot.
03:54 - I think Loki, certainly this version of Loki
03:56 thinks he's the boot.
03:58 And in that moment, he very much finds out,
04:00 no, you're the ant.
04:01 - I beg your pardon?
04:04 - And so it's humbling.
04:06 It forces self reflection and introspection
04:09 in a way that I don't think Loki's ever done before,
04:13 which is really interesting.
04:15 We were just very excited about that moment
04:17 because it's a cool thing to witness.
04:20 You know, this is a guy who's escaped death a lot.
04:24 And to just see the finality of that, the violence of it,
04:28 it's horrible.
04:29 It's a hard thing for me to watch
04:32 'cause I love the character,
04:33 but Tom's just so tremendous in that moment.
04:36 And it's one of my favorite moments in the whole series.
04:39 - Yes, very sad.
04:40 Anyway, it got me thinking.
04:42 Go ahead.
04:44 - Just to speak about kind of the Mobius relationship
04:47 with Loki, I mean, one of the interesting things
04:49 about this dynamic is just that Mobius
04:52 knows everything about him.
04:53 He knows him backwards and forwards.
04:55 And I'm curious if that was something
04:57 that was kind of part of your preparation process.
05:00 - Mobius is watching.
05:02 It was, you know, I was saying that the whole sort of TVA
05:09 and the way the sets had,
05:10 and even our sort of wardrobe had this sort of bureaucratic
05:16 kind of, you know, strangely futuristic,
05:20 but then also sort of retro Orwellian look to it.
05:25 And that was, you know, that's what, you know,
05:28 Mobius brings to the table when he sits across
05:32 from the God of Mischief.
05:33 And he needs something because, you know,
05:36 you're talking to a God, so you better have something.
05:41 And what he has is the weight of the TVA.
05:44 - For all time.
05:46 - Well, actually, I mean,
05:47 I wanted to ask about that relationship
05:48 because it's strange that you guys have a history,
05:50 but time isn't really a thing.
05:52 So it's kind of hard to piece together.
05:55 But like, did you have a reference point
05:57 for that relationship?
05:58 Like, did you like, either in movies
06:00 or just from personal experience?
06:02 - I mean, personally, I always looked at it
06:03 as a sort of like, sort of version of the M Bond dynamic,
06:08 you know, as in like, you know, with me being M
06:12 and Mobius being Bond, this sort of rascally agent
06:17 that just is a bit maverick.
06:19 And my character sort of appreciates him
06:22 for the fact that he takes off on these maverick challenges,
06:26 but also kind of has to have him to the line as well.
06:29 So I sort of looked at it a little bit like that,
06:31 but then I think there's a slightly different chemistry
06:33 going on.
06:34 I think they have a longstanding friendship
06:36 and there's sort of layers to their history.
06:42 - I feel like I'm always looking up to you.
06:45 I like it.
06:46 It's appropriate.
06:47 - To look at this character,
06:48 to look at Hunter B-15 from a macro perspective,
06:51 this is a character who's not a human,
06:53 but a being who knows the inner workings of the universe,
06:56 knows the rules and kind of lives to enforce them.
06:59 Where do you even start with that character
07:01 and what mind space do you get into
07:04 when you're playing a scene?
07:05 - Well, it's just, she's someone who just wants to,
07:10 she knows the rules and she sticks by them.
07:14 So once I know the rules, that's it.
07:16 That's her modus operandi.
07:19 That's her goal and that's what she sticks to.
07:22 And so that was, it really is about learning about the TVA
07:27 and what it's there for, why it's there.
07:31 And yeah, that's it.
07:33 That's all that matters to her, really.
07:36 That's the only thing that matters to her.
07:38 - How far did you go just in terms of defining
07:42 the rules of the TVA?
07:43 Because there are obviously so many questions
07:46 that are sprung out of this.
07:46 I'm curious just how far you went
07:48 as far as figuring out the answers.
07:49 - I mean, we went so far.
07:52 Eric Martin, one of our writers,
07:53 wrote like an encyclopedia basically of it.
07:56 We had to.
07:57 That was the first, one of the first
08:01 and most important tasks of the writers' room.
08:04 After we sort of landed on the real emotional core
08:06 of the show, we had to define the institutional rules
08:11 of the TVA.
08:14 What is a time travel law and how do you break it?
08:19 And so that required a lot of drawing of lines
08:23 on the whiteboards with other squiggly lines
08:26 coming off of it.
08:27 A lot of writers yelling at each other
08:28 over how time travel worked and everything.
08:33 And at the end of that, we'd all created
08:36 a foundational shared knowledge
08:38 that then our job became, okay,
08:41 how can we download this to the audience
08:45 and then have them never really think about it again?
08:47 'Cause I don't want people thinking about rules
08:49 while they watch the show.
08:50 It's gotta just feel natural.
08:52 So that was, I would say, that was probably
08:55 the biggest challenge from the writers,
08:58 one of our most important jobs.
08:59 - There was essentially an encyclopedia
09:02 that was built to kind of explain the rules of the TVA.
09:05 Was that something you had access to?
09:07 - It felt like I listened to the audio version of that.
09:12 (laughing)
09:13 Beginning with sort of a podcast by Tom,
09:17 a Loki podcast, which I attended actually in person.
09:21 Yeah, so many people dive into the whole MCU
09:30 and I had, we could probably auction that off.
09:34 It'd probably be a great thing for charity
09:36 to have Tom Hiddleston walk you through the MCU
09:39 because that's what he did to me
09:40 and it was a beautiful walk.
09:42 - I am smart.
09:43 I know.
09:45 - Okay.
09:46 - Okay.
09:50 - But I also do wanna ask about working
09:52 with Sofia DeMartino because obviously massive reveal.
09:56 I'm curious just about working with her
09:57 and also is there a sense of like getting
09:59 your own performance reflected back to you?
10:02 - I think certainly there's, in that second episode,
10:07 there was a moment of taking these characteristics
10:12 which I had found interesting about Loki,
10:14 his capacity to sort of provoke and disrupt
10:22 and manipulate with charm, often with charisma, with wit.
10:27 He's sort of always playing chess with people.
10:29 They're never quite sure if it's sincere,
10:31 if you can trust him.
10:32 And seeing those characteristics inhabited by other people
10:37 was really interesting.
10:39 It was a really interesting mirror for me.
10:41 And then also a very freeing feeling of like delighting
10:46 in how those, the qualities of Loki might exist
10:52 outside of me completely.
10:56 And I really enjoyed it.
10:59 It was just, you know, really fun.
11:02 And I don't wanna spoil things,
11:05 but you'll see where it goes
11:08 'cause we contain multitudes,
11:10 as some great psychologists once said.
11:13 - I like it.
11:14 Swap it on a t-shirt.
11:16 - Sofia's great.
11:17 Her energy is amazing.
11:18 She does a great job in episode two
11:21 and they're seen together and matching his energy there.
11:25 It's really fun.
11:28 I'll be brief.
11:29 I always knew, you know, in a show about branching timelines
11:35 and variants and everything,
11:37 we wanted to hold up a literal mirror to Loki.
11:40 And so, you know, this is one of the ways
11:44 we're gonna do it.
11:46 - Did you actually get to keep anything from set?
11:49 Just because, I mean, the production design in this
11:50 is absolutely gorgeous.
11:52 - I have my tie.
11:54 - Nice.
11:55 - Tie that I wear.
11:56 But had I been able to keep something from the set,
11:59 you know, I talked about how even sets sometimes
12:04 that I wasn't involved, that I didn't have a,
12:06 you know, wasn't acting in, I'd go up to take a look at
12:09 just because they did such a good job
12:11 with the production design.
12:13 It really, I think, is cool looking.
12:16 - That comes part and parcel of my next question,
12:18 which is about the creation of the TVA
12:20 because this is obviously such a massive idea
12:23 that you're introducing to the MCU,
12:25 but you also have matched it with this really
12:27 just fascinating aesthetic that is both like
12:29 futuristic and '70s.
12:31 So what was the evolution of that look
12:34 and just kind of where did it start?
12:35 What were the other ideas tossed around
12:37 and what was the conversation that led to
12:39 the final decisions?
12:40 - Yeah, so when I pitched basically,
12:42 I mean, where I grew up in Southeast London,
12:44 there's a lot of brutalist kind of architecture.
12:46 A lot of Clockwork Orange was filmed very near me,
12:49 so was Children of Men.
12:50 And I love the idea of this organization, you know,
12:53 having this kind of brutalist kind of architecture,
12:56 but mixed with this kind of Midwest architecture
12:59 'cause, you know, these guys are heroic and very classy
13:01 and, you know, they saved the universe.
13:04 So I just felt like an interesting meld to me.
13:06 And I think for me, like, honestly,
13:09 it was interesting trying to create a place
13:11 that existed outside of space and time
13:13 'cause there's no sun, they're not on a planet,
13:14 but like in this unknowable place.
13:16 And I think somewhere I definitely drew from
13:18 was the comics 'cause they had those amazing images
13:21 of like, you know, office desks stretching into infinity
13:23 and that's definitely something we've carried across
13:26 with all the TVAs look and aesthetic.
13:28 And then also just working out
13:30 with the style and the lighting,
13:31 like me and my DP were really inspired by, you know,
13:34 film noir and detective stories,
13:35 but actually somewhere where there is no sunlight
13:38 lent itself very nicely to, you know, hard shadows
13:41 and that kind of moody look.
13:42 So I think for me, like I was drawing
13:45 from all kinds of places,
13:46 I liked the idea of the TVA having this kind of
13:49 retro futuristic technology
13:51 because I've also worked in a lot of offices
13:53 and often the technology is not updated
13:55 and it is like in need of an update.
13:57 And I thought for me that was really fun and exciting
14:01 was, you know, like even the weaponry they have,
14:04 like looks in some ways it looks dated and basic,
14:07 but then you actually see it in action
14:08 and it's like, oh no, these,
14:10 they're very powerful and not to be reckoned with.
14:12 - Jerk.
14:13 - You can't hide it.
14:14 - You're doing well.
14:15 - Get out of my jet ski magazine and put it down, come on.
14:17 - Have you been on a jet ski since this performance
14:20 and has it raised your appreciation for their existence?
14:23 - I can't say that I'm the biggest fan of jet skiing.
14:28 - So that was acting, that was just pure acting though.
14:33 - Yeah, it was just pure acting.
14:35 I put them, you know,
14:37 they kind of remind me of aquatic leaf blowers,
14:41 which I'm not the biggest fan of either.
14:46 Now I have been on a jet ski,
14:48 when you're on it, it's, you know, it's great.
14:51 It's, you know, pretty exciting.
14:53 You feel like Poseidon.
14:54 The problem is, is if you're standing on the shore
14:57 being subjected to it, not the greatest.
15:00 It's not Walden's pond.
15:02 - That'll be fun though.
15:03 - Yeah, it'd be really fun.
15:05 [BLANK_AUDIO]