Agent Carter Showrunners On Creating Their Own Madame Masque

01/19/2016 03:40 pm EST

Agent Carter returns to ABC tonight with two-hour premiere of its second season, and you can't have a new season without a new villains. Agent Carter has a big one. They're bringing Iron Man villain Whitney Frost, a.k.a. Madame Masque, to the 1940s of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as played by Wynn Everett.

The Agent Carter showrunners tell ComicBook.com that their version of Whitney Frost, like they're version of Doctor Faustus from Season 1, will be different from her comic book counterpart.

"The great thing about Marvel is, because there are so many different versions of all these characters, we're not told by anybody at Marvel, 'You have to do this version of this character,"' Executive Producer Michele Fazekas said in a phone interview. "So in many ways we've done our own versions of a lot of the characters that we've introduced, like Fennhoff. Whitney Frost, and Madame Masque, is sort of our version of that character. We have nods to the mask, we have nods to why she wears that mask."

Fazekas explained that they drew inspiration from an actual historical figure, Hedy Lamarr, in conceiving their own version of Frost.

"We've also sort of merged that character with Hedy Lamarr, who in the forties was also an inventor, and sort of like this scientific genius," Fazekas explained. Like Frost, Lamarr was also a Hollywood starlet. "We really liked that, so that's sort of where Whitney starts in the beginning of this episode. She's very famous, but she's this sort of secret genius who operates through her husband in this very Lady Macbeth way. It's really fun to sort of compare and contrast her with Peggy Carter, because they're very similar, both beautiful, smart women, but both very different.

"Peggy leads with her power," Fazekas continued. "She's fine to kick everyone's ass, and Whitney feels like she has to hide that, because she's been told her whole life, 'You are not valued for your brains, you're valued for what you look like.' It's very interesting to have time to explore how these two women ended up where they are.:"

Agent Carter returns to ABC with a two-hour season premiere on Jan. 19, at 9 p.m. ET.

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