Related: Complete Coverage of TCA Winter Press Tour
Pasadena, Calif. — While James D’Arcy assured the audience at the TCA winter press tour Wednesday that he likes TV shows centered around an antihero, “now it’s become almost impossible to have someone who is genuinely good front and center,” he said.
Marvel’s Agent Carter, which debuted Jan. 6 and airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m., is that show. Hayley Atwell stars as Agent Carter, the British-born spy from the Captain America films. Executive producer Jeph Loeb said that the series hits three key Marvel themes. The heroes are empathetic and aspirational, the show has humor and at the end of each episode and “you have the feeling that this is going to turn out OK,” he said.
Coexecutive producer Stephen McFeely said he was impressed with Atwell from her first screen test on Captain America: The First Avenger.
“I don’t think we gave you that much to do in the first movie,” coexecutive producer Chris Dingess told Atwell on stage Wednesday, “and you took it and suddenly you knew you wanted to know more about (Carter).”
Atwell said she was “over the moon” to be cast in Captain America: The First Avenger. “We saw glimpses of what she could be in the first film,” she said. “There was so much more we could explore.”
The series, set post-World War II in 1946 and portraying the sexism of the era, not only revolves around a woman working at the Strategic Scientific Reserve — “more qualified for the job than any of us,” said costar Chad Michael Murray — but also features a unique female friendship between Carter and Lyndsy Fonseca’s Angie Martinelli.
“It’s so refreshing to see two women on screen who are supporting each other and genuinely are friends and are not competing,” Atwell said, “I don’t know much television that shows that.”
