Agents of SHIELD’s Jeff Ward Talks Getting Cast and His Original Role

Agents of SHIELD is coming to an end next week, and fans are eager to find out where their [...]

Agents of SHIELD is coming to an end next week, and fans are eager to find out where their favorite characters will end up. All of the show's main cast of characters have come a long way since their role debuted, including Deke Shaw, who is played by Jeff Ward. FitzSimmons' grandson joined the story back in season five and has provided a lot of laughs over the last few seasons. In fact, this season saw one of his greatest moments: him rocking out to Simple Minds' "Don't You (Forget About Me)" in the '80s. Recently, Ward had a chat with Looper and revealed he was originally cast in a much smaller part.

"I was cast as Virgil, who is in a grand total of two scenes in the first episode of season five. I originally had auditioned for Deke," Ward explained. "Ironically, the character that I originally auditioned for was named Deke, but then they switched names and stuff. It was all super confusing, but I ended up auditioning for this part, for what would become Fitz and Jemma's grandson, even though I didn't know that for 10 episodes. I auditioned for that, didn't get it. They gave me a different part, which was Virgil. He's the guy that, when Coulson wakes up, is trying to explain what happened to them in the Lighthouse, and then he gets claws put through his face and dies. That was who I was cast as."

Ward added, "I showed up to the table read and I did the table read as that character. I didn't know that it was the premiere of the season, because they're all very secretive about it. There were people from Marvel and ABC and all these extra people, and I immediately got terrified because I was like, 'Oh no. Now I'm going to get fired.' So I was like, 'I got to do a good job.' I did it, and he literally had two scenes, he had maybe 20 lines. Everybody was really nice about it when I read it. They laughed and were very nice."

"I walked out of the table read and back to my car, and by the time I got to my car I had a voicemail from Maurissa Tancharoen, the showrunner, and she said, 'Will you come back and read for that part again?' I did, and I found out that night, at 11:30 at night, that I was going to be playing Deke. It was really wild. As an actor, you always dream about stuff like that happening, but it never actually does. It was so crazy. I was supposed to be there for one day, and I ended up there for a little over three years," Ward concluded.

How would you like Deke's story to end on Agents of SHIELD? Tell us in the comments!

Agents of SHIELD's two-part series finale begins on Wednesday, August 12th, at 9 PM ET on ABC.

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