Agent Carter’s James D’Arcy On Playing Marvel’s First Male Feminist

Tonight, Marvel’s Agent Carter returns to ABC with a two-hour season premiere event.

That means actor James D’Arcy is returning to his role as Edwin Jarvis, Howard Stark’s butler and Peggy Carter’s staunchest ally.

Ahead of the premiere, we spoke to D’Arcy about wearing wool suits in the Los Angeles sun, meeting Jarvi’s wife, Ana, and playing what he describes as Marvel’s “first male feminist.

So how are you and Jarvis enjoying the new Los Angeles setting for Agent Carter Season 2?

James D’Arcy:Jarvis does not approve of the West Coast lifestyle. I think the further west he moves away from London, the more uncomfortable he is and the further away from what I think he might consider to be civilization he gets. I think that the showrunners take great delight in making sure that he continues to wear more or less the same costumes, so I was in three piece woolen suits in the middle of August in Los Angeles which is not the most comfortable experiences I’ve ever had. He takes a pretty dim view of all things Los Angeles, certainly at the beginning, and it remains to be seen whether he holds that position for the duration of the show.

What I do think it has done for us is just, in a very technical sense, the show’s always been shot in Los Angeles, so in season one we were saying we were in New York but actually we shot in LA, which meant that we were somewhat more limited in terms of scope and wide shots that one might be able to use. Now, of course, we don’t have those constraints, in fact, far from it. There’s so much of LA that so easily lends itself to this time period. That was the first great thing for the show was that suddenly it had a much bigger scale, hopefully.

I think that the other thing is that with the sunshine comes a lighter air. The first season I think was very tough for Peggy, she was still trying to process her feelings about Steve and who she was in the world and obviously we had some sort of conclusion to her relationship with Captain America that ended that season. Now, it’s just a brand new day and I think that there’s a lightness that comes with it. I don’t know if it was one of the things that didn’t work in the show in season one, but we keep it pretty front footed than I guess we did in season one. There does seem to be more fun to be had in season two. I think certainly Jarvis has … loosened up would not be the correct expression, but they’ve written quite a lot of fun stuff for me to do so that’s very enjoyable.

In Season 2, we finally get to meet Mrs. Jarvis. How close or different is Lotte Verbeek’s portrayal of Jarvis’s wife to what you had in mind when she was off screen in the first season?

James D’Arcy: Firstly, Lotte is an absolute delight of a human being and, when she arrived, I think she’d been in Europe and she arrived in Los Angeles maybe the day before her first shooting day. And so then we came to shoot the scene and she did something in the scene which wasn’t in the script, which is she slapped me on the ass. When she did it, I thought, absolutely brilliant, well done. I’ve been the person that’s arrived in the second season of a show, and it’s all set up, and you feel very nervous, and you don’t want to upset the status quo or anything like that, and it takes great courage to come in and assert yourself in some way, and what she has done is absolutely fantastic.

It’s really not what I thought Ana would be like, but it’s so much better than the pretty restricted view that I had in my head when we shot season one. I think that they’re an immensely sweet couple together. I’m excited for people to meet her and it’s one of the things that I was asked a lot after season one is, ” Will we meet your wife?” I’m happy that the showrunners deemed fit to answer that question and its positive.

The first season really solidified Peggy and Jarvis’s relationship. What kind of new challenges, new stresses, and new tests will their relationship face in Season 2?

James D’Arcy: What can one say and what can one not say? There’s so much that I can’t say that I would love to, and I don’t want to spoil anything. If I can answer the question like this, obviously we found in season one that Peggy and Jarvis almost immediately had an extremely close way of interacting with each other. They seem to speak at the same speed, and they seem to get each other’s jokes, and they have an understanding for each other that went a bit deeper than perhaps one might have expected quite quickly, which is great because now, in season two, we have an immediate shorthand which is terrific and to our advantage.

The way that I suppose I would have to answer the question is to say that we have phenomenal writers on the show. Really, really wonderful. They won’t just let it stand like that. They will, I promise you, provide all the excitement and drama and some really good laughs that you might hope you could get out of that relationship. I would have to say that the arc of their relationship over this season was really one of the most exciting parts of doing the show for me.

Can we expect to see Jarvis getting his hands dirty a little more often in season two, now that he’s grown accustomed to teaming up with Peggy on these missions?

James D’Arcy: Now, let me see, how do you answer that one? I mean, I think it was pretty clear in season one that Jarvis was quite enthusiastic to get his hands dirty. I would say that that is a very good question to be asking, and I would say that we … this isn’t too much of a spoiler, but Jarvis has readied himself just in case of the possibility of being called on for some other mission in the future. I think he’s probably developed a bit of a taste for it, but then as the season unravels, obviously, the stakes will be high, and I think this all gets a bit real in an exciting and frightening way.

Is there a side of Jarvis that, as an actor, you hope to get to show in season two that maybe didn’t show up so much in the first season?

James D’Arcy: I love this character, I really love what he stands for. I love that he is an absolutely stand up, honest, dignified man. He’s a supporter of women. I actually ended up thinking that he’s almost the first male feminist. Particularly in season one, when we were talking so much about Peggy’s place as a woman in a man’s world and all that kind of stuff, and Jarvis just absolutely took her at face value as a human being.

I feel really, really good about being part of a show that is positive. It has positive things to say, and of course we try to say them with as much excitement and as much humor as we possibly can, but ultimately it’s a show that is completely standing on its front foot. Obviously, there’s drama in it but all our main characters are unique. They’re not all, as is the fashion now, riddled with various incapacities or insecurities, or they’re not all alcoholics or pill popping crazy lunatics. They think twice about the value of life, and I really, really love that it has that value set about it. I think that certainly, in conversations I’ve had with people who have seen the show, is that it’s the kind of thing that actually whole families can and do watch together, which I think is wonderful, I’m thrilled about that.

Is there an extra dimension to Jarvis that perhaps we didn’t explore in season one? Well of course, there’s always, you know, you’re never going to get to the bottom of a person in mass in such a short period of time. I would say in season two there’s a really good arc that my character goes on and it starts in one place and ends up in somewhere profoundly different. I think that more than that, I better not share anything else because I don’t want to spoil anything. It’s terrific, it’s honestly really terrific, and the whole show this year was such a joy to do.

Agent Carter returns on Jan. 19 at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.