Thunderbolts* cast on assembling antihero team, tackling mental health in new Marvel film

LOS ANGELES – The latest Marvel Studios movie features a band of misfit heroes who are all wrestling with inner demons as they try to save the world.

Opening in Singapore cinemas on May 1, Thunderbolts* follows a group of disillusioned supersoldiers and assassins from previous titles in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) and Red Guardian (David Harbour).

Betrayed by corrupt Central Intelligence Agency director Valentina (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), they team up to defeat her nefarious plan, but are forced to confront the darkest chapters of their pasts.

In a recent Zoom press conference, the actors praised the movie’s frank exploration of depression, hopelessness and other mental health issues.

English actress Pugh, 29, sets the tone in a chilling opening sequence where her character, a skilled assassin, leaps from Kuala Lumpur’s 678.9m-high Merdeka 118 – the world’s second-tallest building – while narrating her darkest thoughts.

“With the voice-over, it did feel like she was stepping off a building as if she was taking her own life.

“And I remember thinking how powerful it was to start a movie like that,” recalls Pugh, who picked up a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for the period drama Little Women (2019).

Yelena, whom she played in Black Widow (2021), feels lost because her adoptive sister Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) died in that movie.

And in that opening scene, “instantly, as an audience member, we knew exactly what she was feeling”, Pugh says.

The depiction of raw emotional pain continues with Lewis Pullman’s mysterious character Bob, who is discovered by Yelena and the others in a vault, with no memory of how he got there.

The 32-year-old American actor wants the character, who is wrestling with past traumas, to resonate with any viewer dealing with similar challenges. “That was a big hope of ours,” says Pullman, who starred in the period drama Lessons In Chemistry (2023).

He had conversations with Thunderbolts*’ American director Jake Schreier (Paper Towns, 2015; Beef, 2023) about how to navigate these themes in a way that did not feel preachy, “but that was very grounded and had as much truth as possible”.

“I grew up pretty anxious and suffering from depression, and that is not a fun thing to talk about,” Pullman says.

“But a big goal in this film was to be, like, ‘Let’s get rid of that kind of weird quaky feeling that you get when you talk about it.’ Because it’s in the silence where the suffering really occurs.”

Meanwhile, Russell’s character – still scarred by his brief tenure as Captain America in the Disney+ series The Falcon And The Winter Soldier (2021) – wants everyone to acknowledge him as a hero.

“John Walker will jump on the grenade, but he wants to jump on the grenade so someone will film it and put it on Instagram and make him a national hero.

“That is reflective of society today, where nobody’s doing anything out of selfless reasons,” notes the 38-year-old American actor, who appeared in the Godzilla spin-off series Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters (2023 to present).

“And I like playing that version of an American hero who has to hit rock bottom before you can start your journey back to where you want to be.”

Stan, who played fan favourite supersoldier Bucky Barnes in The Falcon And The Winter Soldier and eight Marvel films, says he and the other Thunderbolts* – the name foisted on the group by Red Guardian – are trying to figure out their lives just like everyone else.

“I think what people are going to connect to is how real all of these characters are, that they wear their hearts on their sleeve and are trying to do the right thing,” says the 42-year-old American actor, who was Oscar-nominated for playing US President Donald Trump in the drama The Apprentice (2024).

“And what’s a villain and what’s a hero? My character has always been riding that fine line and trying to figure it out without losing who he is. And that’s sort of what we do in life,” Stan says.