Is there anyone out there who still watches Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.? The show’s ratings have been in a steep decline all season long, though they enjoyed a bit of a bump last night with Lady Sif’s appearance. Now, it seems that Marvel is opting into introducing more comic book characters on the show as they plan to bring classic Hulk villain, Glenn Talbot on board.
Talbot will be played by Heroes alum Adrian Pasdar, and will only be appearing in one episode for now. The character has a long history of being a thorn in the Hulk’s side, even going so far as marrying Bruce’s sweetheart Betty Ross and outing Bruce as the Hulk. In other words, he’s a bit of an asshole, a role Pasdar plays often. The actor himself joked about his casting in a recent interview, saying:
“I got a call from my good friend, Jeph Loeb. “Would you come and do this role?” and I read the character description and I thought, “Oh man. Here it is again. The sanctimonious [jerk]. That’s what they’re coming to me for.” [laughs]
Pasdar was asked if he did any research for the role, and actually had a pretty great story of his son taking him to Midtown Comics in NYC in order to get some information from the people that work at the shop.
The best part of the whole thing is that I was actually in Toys”R”Us with my nine-year old in Times Square. We were in New York for the Super Bowl, and that’s when I got a call from Jeph. [My son] heard me very patiently talk to Jeph and as soon as I hung up, my little boy Beckett said, “What’s the job, Dad? What’s the job?” and I said, “Well, do you know Colonel Talbot?” and he said, “Glenn Talbot? Yeah, everybody does.” I said, “Well, they asked me to play him.” He said, “Well, dad. Here’s what we gotta do. We gotta go to Midtown Comics right away because you know the guy on the second floor with the beard?” I said, “Yeah.” “We’ve gotta find him and ask him what he thinks and his questions. He’ll help you out.”
So we left Toys”R”Us and made our way to 40th and 7th and went upstairs, and my man that I was looking for wasn’t there but there’s no shortage of help.
So we went in there and in no time at all, I had no shortage of guys helping me out finding everything I could about Talbot.
He was also asked about getting into costume for the role. As you can see from the official image, he’s sporting Talbot’s trademark military garb and mustache, which was a bit hard to pull off.
“The mustache, we spent a long time on that, a couple of days. That was probably a thorn in the side to make-up and hair people. I had a week to prepare and as macho as I like to think I am, there’s just no way I can grow that mustache in a week. So we had to cut up a $400 dollar mustache and try it on knowing that it might fail and there’s not always room to do that in the make-up department.”
With the Hulk not expected to show up on the show anytime soon, I wonder what kind of role Talbot will have. Will he be a thorn in the side of the S.H.I.E.L.D. team, or serve as merely a bit of fan service? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see when he appears on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in April.