She-Hulk leans into its similarities to the police procedural Law & Order in a new featurette for the Disney+ series. Titled “Call My Lawyer,” the She-Hulk: Attorney at Law trailer goes behind the scenes with the cast and crew to discuss the marriage of legal courtroom drama and comedy. Being a high-profile lawyer in the Marvel Cinematic Universe means Jennifer Walters has to deal with all sorts of clients in her day job, including visits from Sorcerer Supreme Wong, her cousin Bruce Banner, and run-of-the-mill supervillains. Nowhere is this more evident than in the opening monologue by the narrator.
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“In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the people are protected by two separate, yet equally important groups,” the narrator says as Law & Order-inspired music plays in the background. “The heroes who save them, and the attorneys who clean up their collateral damage. But only one can be both. This is her story.” We even hear the iconic “dun dun” tone from the popular NBC franchise. We then see Tatiana Maslany as Jennifer Walter, closing a door as she whispers, “Lawyer show.”
Some of the other names we hear from are Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige, an executive producer on She-Hulk, director/executive producer Kat Coiro, actress Renée Elise Goldsberry (Mallory Book), and co-executive producer Wendy Jacobson.
A clip from She-Hulk shows Jennifer theorizing how Captain America could have been a virgin before he got the super-soldier serum. What’s even more noteworthy about the footage is it possibly teases a future World War Hulk project. However, that’s only been rumored so far and hasn’t been officially announced by Marvel Studios.
ComicBook.com recently got to attend the virtual press conference for She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, where head writer Jessica Gao and director and executive producer Kat Coiro revealed how her fourth-wall-breaking in the series evolved over time, with the show briefly considering including text boxes of “editor’s notes” onscreen, that Jen could interact with like she does in the comics.
“For me, foundationally, I felt like first and foremost the fourth-wall breaking and the kind of meta-humor and the self-awareness [was the most important element to retain],” the writer and executive producer said during a recent press conference. “Because it was the John Byrne run that made me fall in love with this character, you know? It was just so lighthearted and fun and refreshing. So that was always kind of a foundational element.”
“It went through a lot of evolutionary steps,” Gao said. “How much should she talk to camera? Is she talking directly to the audience? Is there another meta element? Is she talking to somebody else that’s more behind the scenes? At one point there was an iteration in the scripts where instead of talking directly to camera, there were text boxes that were editor’s notes—like the comic books, how there were editor’s notes in comics—and she was actually interacting with the editor’s notes that would be on screen. I mean, we did eventually scrap that idea, but we went through a lot of different versions of how she would do it.”
“Ultimately it was about finding the balance,” she said. “Breaking the fourth wall does connect to the audience and draws us in, but not so much so that we’re not connecting to her story in the world that we’ve built.”
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law debuts August 18th on Disney+.
