Eternals Star Says Marvel Used “Man in a Trench Coat” to Deliver Top-Secret Scripts

One of the many things Marvel Studios is known for is the secrecy surrounding its many projects, whether they be feature films or the various streaming series’ on Disney+. The next film on the Marvel slate getting ready to release is Eternals, which introduces a new team of super-powered heroes to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. One member of the Eternals is Makkari, played by The Walking Dead alum Lauren Ridloff. The star recently peeled back the curtain on how Marvel handles its top-secret scripts, revealing how the company utilizes a mysterious man in a trench coat to deliver the goods to its actors.

Ridloff joined her Eternals co-stars Angelina Jolie (Thena), Gemma Chan (Sersi) and Salma Hayek (Ajak) in an interview with Elle.com, where she discussed the delivery process for scripts. “They had a man in a trench coat—I’m not making this up, I’m not kidding—a man in a trench coat who’d come over to my house at 11 at night with new script pages, in a manila envelope. You had to trade them off with the old script pages. Then he’d just walk off into the night. It was very undercover, covert,” she said.

Hayek added that even with this extra layer of security, it was still impossible for her to reveal plot details to her husband. “One time when we walked into one part of the ship, I was blown away by the set design, the world, how they did it,” Hayek said. “I came home and tried to describe it to my husband. I said, ‘It was like everything in the ocean—like inside the ocean, the plants.’ He’s like, ‘What? This spaceship comes from underneath the ocean?’ I go, ‘No, the decoration.’ ‘You mean there are fish?’ But there are no fish. See, I can’t even explain it to you. He kept asking me for days and I kept telling him the best that I could, but it’s impossible.”

Eternals will feature Ridloff’s Makkari as the first deaf superhero in the MCU, as Marvel Studios continues to diversify its cast of characters to reflect more of the real world. The film will also introduce the MCU’s first openly gay superhero in Brian Tyree Henry’s Phastos, who will share an on-screen kiss with actor Haaz Steiman as part of their same-sex romance.

Chloe Zhao directs Eternals, which arrives in theaters on Nov. 5, 2021. Which member of Eternals is your favorite? Make sure to let us know in the comments section below.