Before he was an actor, Wyatt Russell was a professional ice hockey player, and he acknowledges that his background may have influenced his portrayal of John Walker in the MCU. Russell plays the soldier who was chosen to become the new Captain America before disgracing himself and becoming a vigilante with the alias “U.S. Agent.” The character’s overzealous approach to peacekeeping was a central part of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and Russell sought to convey some recklessness in his movement. At the premiere of Thunderbolts*, he told The Hollywood Reporter that he drew on his hockey experience to inform that kind of performance.
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When asked if hockey had influenced his portrayal of John Walker, Russell mused, “Maybe, a little bit,” noting, “I’ve been so far removed from hockey now, any muscle memory I had from that is pretty much gone. But there was some physicality that I think helps. Anything with sports, like, it helps.” Thinking about the question out loud, he recalled conversations with his stunt double about how Walker would move.
“We talked a lot — my stunt performer Justin Eaton — about carrying himself, and how he would do that,” he recalled. “It always was like, ‘bull in a China shop,’ and I did reflect a lot on a couple of the people that I played with that will remain nameless. How they conduct themselves on the ice.”
[RELATED: John Walker Is a Much More Fascinating Character than the MCU Showed Us]
Without much prompting, Russell was convinced to name names after all. “Milan Lucic is one of them,” he said, then looked into the camera to address his former teammate directly. “Luc, you’re in there as part of it. So, yeah, I did call on some of my past, you know.”
Sports Mentality
On a less obvious note, Russell thought that his experience in professional hockey had helped him convey the “vulnerability” of Walker’s fall from grace and his struggles with self doubt. He recalled that he and other players avoided showing any “crack in the armor,” because “even if your coach took it well, now he knows you’re not feeling good, or now he knows you’re doubting yourself, and any bad thing that happens, you can be looked at very differently.”
“The reality is that that you’re not going to become a better, fully-realized version of yourself until you could admit your shortcomings,” he went on. “So, that was fun to play, and it was fun to play [Walker’s] sort of cracks, his vulnerability, and humor. That was fun for me.”
It sounds like Walker’s story will be getting a lot deeper in his second MCU appearance, and there’s still more to come in Avengers: Doomsday. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is streaming now on Disney+, and Thunderbolts* hits theaters around the U.S. on Friday, May 2nd.
