Jessica Jones Star Eka Darville on Addictions, the Desire to Team Up with Taika Waititi, and More

Before long, Jessica Jones season 3 will be making its way to Netflix, wrapping up Netflix's [...]

Before long, Jessica Jones season 3 will be making its way to Netflix, wrapping up Netflix's Defendersverse as we know it. That includes the story arc of one Malcolm Ducasse (Eka Darville), who has used the last two seasons to transform from a near-homeless drug addict to a career man.

ComicBook.com had a chance to speak with Darville earlier this month — here's what he had to say about his character's dark turn in the coming season and more.

ComicBook.com: Season two was a pretty important time for Malcolm, where we saw him transform into this, I'd say cutthroat investigator. We see that eventually, that ended up costing him his relationship with Jessica, how does that severed relationship factor into Malcolm's character as season three begins?

Eka Darville: I mean in a huge way, where we find it in season three he's a full-time investigator with Jeri Hogarth and her new firm and after some very morally and ethically questionable things. But I feel like it's a natural progression from where he was with his relationship dynamic with Jessica in season two where he was kind of getting walked all over at so many different points and for him it's really kind of drawing a line in the sand around self-respect and what he's willing to do in order to get respect, whether it's from Jessica or Jeri or from his new girlfriend or from the world at large. And so it's yeah, very fun to play, very different again from anywhere that we've been with Malcolm and yeah, grateful for the whole experience.

Now, will Malcolm's past troubles with addiction be something that impacts his budding career? Obviously, you and I both know Hogarth certainly can't be an easy character to work for.

Yeah, definitely not. I think he's under a lot of pressure and I think those pressures create cracks...without giving away too much. I think anyone, like...the drugs in my view of it are secondary, the addiction is something that's there deeper on a psychological level and just stopping the drugs doesn't make that go away necessarily. Absolutely he's still working with the addictive mentality, it just takes different forms in season two. He was funneling it and channeling it into his gym routine and basically as a sex addict and in season three he's trying to keep it under reigns. We'll see how well he does with that.

You bring up the sex addiction. Malcolm's relationship with Trish and Jessica at this point are both a bit...strange. I know you can't give too much away, especially now that it's the end of the show, but do you feel these relationships are going to come back full circle?

Well I'll speak to this separately. With regard to Jessica, she's family and I feel like family relationships fluctuate infinitely and yet you're still blood and that I could say the same for them. I think the fans will be very satisfied with where the resolution that it all comes too by the end of third season.

And with regard to Trish, it remains to be seen, where their relationship goes. I feel like Malcolm and Trish's relationship is incredibly complex and has gone through many different iterations but there is definitely a very different kind of intimacy that they share in the third season and again it was a joy, just like I absolutely love working with Rach.

This show is one of the first superhero properties to both feature a female lead and showrunner. As an actor, what's it mean to you to be part of these show with one of the most diverse casts and crew under the entire Marvel umbrella?

Yeah, if anything that would be the thing that I'm most proud of in regard to this show. I'm a black actor obviously and diversity is something that's very close to my heart and I care a whole lot about. To be on a show that's championing that was super important to me and I feel like we were able to make a really solid impact and set a new barometer for what should be normal and is becoming more normal within the industry as it is in the world.

You've become a fan-favorite on the show as Malcolm but while we have you here, we've got to ask, is there another superhero you'd ever have your eyes on playing? Growing up who was the one character you said, "Man, I've got to play that character someday."

Um, God. In the superhero world ... I mean I really like the gritty stuff. As an actor getting to, like an epic on-screen, but on the day actually doing it on these giant blockbuster things, you're just standing in front of a bright green screen and that's way less interesting to me than these cool, dark nitty gritty pockets of New York that we got to explore on our show.

I feel like I've really got to do the superhero thing in the way that I would want to do it which is this more kind of grounded, grungy version rather than the kind of polished Guardians of the Galaxy star thing. I would absolutely love to play a character on that film, I think it's brilliant. Black Panther is absolutely brilliant. Taika Waititi is one of my favorite directors of all time so Thor would have been fun. I guess yeah, that's it. That's my superhero knowledge in a nutshell.

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What have you thought of Malcolm's character arc so far? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below or by tweeting me at @AdamBarnhardt!

Jessica Jones Season Three debuts June 14th. The first two seasons are now streaming.

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