Iron Fist Cast Interviews from the New York Comic Con

Interviews with the Marvel’s Iron Fist Cast

During the 2016 New York Comic Con, fans finally got a chance to see and meet the cast of Netflix and Marvel’s next comic book TV series, Iron Fist, which will debut on March 17, 2017 at 12:01am PT in all territories where Netflix is available.

Marvel’s Iron Fist follows Danny Rand (Finn Jones), who returns to New York City after being missing for years. He fights against the criminal element corrupting New York City with his incredible kung-fu mastery and ability to summon the awesome power of the fiery Iron Fist.

ComingSoon.net and SuperHeroHype had a chance to talk to the Jeph Loeb, Executive Producer and Marvel’s Head of Television, and the Iron Fist cast including Finn Jones (Danny Rand), Jessica Henwick (Colleen Wing), Jessica Stroup (Joy Meachum), Tom Pelphrey (Ward Meachum), David Wenham (Harold Meachum), and showrunner and Executive Producer, Scott Buck.

Iron Fist is the fourth of the epic live-action adventure series (Marvel’s Daredevil, Marvel’s Jessica Jones and Marvel’s Luke Cage which are now streaming, all leading up to the teaming of the main characters in Marvel’s The Defenders) to premiere only on Netflix.

Q: What can fans expect to see on TV that’s going to different or the same from the comic books they read?

Jeph Loeb: Well, as with all of our Netflix shows it’s obviously very real. It’s very grounded. What we were really interested, from the very beginning, was exploring who is Danny Rand. This is a character who’s a little younger than some of the other heroes that we’ve seen so far.

We open with a very simple premise, which is, at the age of 10, Danny vanished off the face of the Earth. The world believes that the son of a billionaire is gone. When he reappears at the beginning of the show, and he’s 25 years old. He announces, “I’m here.” Has no proof, has no identity, has no DNA.

One of the things that’s fantastic about the show is, it’s very much a mystery. It’s very much a, “how do you go about proving who you are when there’s no way to do that.” That’s not just the story, that’s also the theme of it, which is, “how do you go about proving who you are when no one knows,” including yourself, “what’s happened to you.”

Q: How did the roles come about for each of you? Did you get a call, did you audition for it?

Finn Jones: It’s funny actually, I was on the last day of (Game of) Thrones, and I was in the airport on the way back home, and I was thinking, “F*ck. I’ve just had a job for six years, I’m now unemployed,” I had no, I was scared. I was scared. I was an unemployed actor. This audition comes through and I’m checking my email and I’m like, “Whoa,” it’s got this code name, I’m not allowed to say the code name. It’s got this code name, I’m like, “What the hell is this?” I was like, “Is this a football show? What’s going on?” I opened it and I’m like, “Oh, it’s a Marvel, Netflix show,” and I, similar, I wanted to work on a Netflix show after Thrones, I think it’s one of the best platforms at the moment for bringing television shows to the people. Yeah, and so I sent off a self-tape back in London, and that was in November.

Basically this audition came through as I was in the airport, leaving Game of Thrones. It’s funny how things just like flow into each other, like it was always meant to happen, like it was a kind of destiny thing, very strange. Then I sent of this self-tape and I didn’t hear anything until after Christmas, and I was in LA. Then they called me into audition in the room, and I went through a couple of series of screen tests, and then eventually I got the part after like a two week of grueling endless back and forths of kind of going and meet studio heads and testing with various actors. Yeah, and then I found out in February.

Jessica Stroup: Then immediately you went into training, right?

Jones: Yeah, then afterwards I went immediately to training for like a month and a half I think it was. I was training for like five, six hours a day, I was doing three hours of martial arts and about one and a half, two hours of weight training, as well as getting to grips with all the mythology of the show, and Buddhist philosophy, I really wanted to get into the head of that character. Yeah, it’s kind of been non-stop since February.

Stroup: I had finished up a show, The Following, on FOX, and when pilot season came around I just was putting it out there that I wanted to get on different platform, like I wanted to work on a Netflix, on a Hulu on an Amazon, but my main goal was Netflix. My team knew that, they were funneling scripts and things to me and I saw this, and the best thing about auditioning for a Marvel show is that you don’t know anything, you’re not given any information, right, even the sides that I auditioned with.

I mean it’s like, I don’t know who this character was. For me it was just, it happened very fast, I tested with Tom (Pelphrey) and then got the show basically the next day and was out here. I’ve now caught up reading the comic books, constant questions, constantly trying to follow with the showrunners, the writers, see what they’re going to do with the characters. My character is a fun and a complex one, so I enjoyed it.

Tom Pelphrey: I play Ward Meachum. I got some sides that were sort of nondescript, and I didn’t even know what project they were attached to. Sent in a tape, went good. Then, went in to test for the part, at which point, I got to read the first 2 scripts for the show.

As I was sitting in some back closet on Marvel’s LA lot, after I had surrendered all of my personal belongings, and signed away my life, in walked Jeph Loeb, before I was about to read the script. I got to meet him and he told me about the story, and kind of pitched me the character. Very exciting. Then, you know, got the job, and here we are.

David Wenham: I was in Sweden, and it got a phone call from Jeph Loeb, telling me about and asking me if I’d like to be involved in this particular project. It was about a half-hour conversation where Jeph basically talked about the world of Marvel, the Marvel universe. Then, the story of Iron Fist, which I wasn’t familiar at the time.

His conversation for half an hour had me sort of floating in air in Sweden. He said, “would you like to be involved.” He couldn’t tell me exactly what my character did. He said, “But, trust me. You’ll have an amazing time. Then I agreed. I flew from Sweden back to Australia, packed a bag, and then flew out to New York. Began an adventure, not even knowing what I was diving in to. The world of Marvel is more secret than Donald Trump’s tax returns. It’s like, you just have to trust him.

I play Harold Meachum, Ward’s father. Harold was a business partner with Danny Rand’s father. They have a corporation called Rand. He’s a very wealthy, powerful individual. That was fun to play, because I’m not.

Q: Danny is an outsider pretty much from two worlds, so he’s an outsider to New York, but he’s also an outside in K’un-Lun as well. How was that to play as a character?

Jones: It’s fantastic, it’s so great. The best thing about Danny Rand is that he has these huge massive contradictions. One half of him is this super centered, trying to be a super centered martial artist and warrior, and the other half of him is a live-wire, suffering from trauma, riddling with PTSD. You’ve got those two contradictions that are constantly battling each other, and the other contradiction is that he’s spent some time in the East, but then he’s from a westernized family.

Bringing those two together, especially when he comes back to New York and starts getting involved with Rand, there’s a lot of corporate questions, corporate ethics quite a lot because he sees through things, and he’s not, he’s innocent and he’s pure. He hasn’t been brought up in this very materialist, dog-eat-dog world, which then suddenly he finds himself in. There’s lots of contradictions to play with, and it’s a lot of fun as an actor to kind of get into that.

Q: Now, in the comics, Harold Meachum plays a small, but, very corporate role before he dies. Joy spends a lot of time trying to get revenge for her father’s death. I was wondering if you could describe Harold’s relationship to his children now that we’re going to see a little bit more of that.

Wenham: I think it’s pretty clear that the narrative and I can’t talk about the previous ones, Daredevil, etc. Iron Fist itself, the narratives, and whatever, they’re some similarities from the comic book, and other points are particularly new.

In terms of the family dynamic, I think it’s fine to say that the relationship between the three of them, Harold, Ward, and Joy, is complex, to say the least. It’s multi-layered, it’s multi-dimensional. It’s surprising. It’s forever changing, depending on circumstances. It’s forever evolving. You know, it’s a strange relationship.

Q: Jeph, you used the word “grounded.” In Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, they all kind of lend themselves to that “grounded” feeling. Whereas Iron Fist is more out there. He’s more mystical. How did you go about blending that or did you use a grounded approach to the show?

Scott Buck: It certainly was one of the challenges of the show. We approached it all through character. You know, what would it be like to be Danny Rand in that situation? I mean, people don’t even believe you’re Danny Rand to begin with. How much of that side of yourself can you show the world, without making yourself seem even crazier, potentially. It is absolutely something we do try to touch on in a real way.

Loeb: Also, it gave us an opportunity in the same kind of way that we’ve been trying to do is… You know, we’ve been saying from the very beginning that New York City is the 5th Defender. We’ve seen Hell’s Kitchen. We’ve seen Harlem. What we really haven’t seen is the high-end world, the financial world of New York, which is such a big part of it. As Stevie Wonder once said, “Skyscrapers and everything.”

That kind of billionaire existence, high-level corporation, big pharma, things like that, we get a chance to put our little Marvel mark on, and see what happens.

Q: Now, the character Jeri Hogarth (from Jessica Jones) is going to be in the show. That news has already been announced. In the comics, Jeryn Hogarth ran Danny’s estate. Is she going to play a similar role in Iron Fist? Or, do we get something totally different?

Buck: She has an extremely important role in Danny’s life. I can’t really reveal anything, unfortunately, about it. She’s very integral to our story, and to Danny’s journey.

Loeb: I think one of the things that’s a lot of fun is, you know, you’ve already met Carrie-Anne Moss’s character. Danny has a very much of a hopeful optimism about him. Carrie-Anne, obviously, lives in a different kind of world. Being able to see those two worlds collide is just the beginning of the many obstacles that he goes through.

It’s one of the things that’s really great about what Scott created, and the extraordinary writing team, is that, it really does build through a series of metaphorical fights, which is very important in a martial arts film. To show how the character needs to grow from the innocent, wide-eyed person, to someone who has to come to terms with, “this is the way the outside world works.” How am I going to make it work for me?

It’s a journey of self, which is something that we really haven’t had a chance to be able to do.