Agents of SHIELD: Ming-Na Wen Explains the Struggle of Playing May With Even Less Emotion

Things have taken an unexpected turn for Agent May during the last couple of episodes of Agents of SHIELD. The character has been more unfeeling and stoic than usual, and last week she seemed to have a panic attack mid-mission, which is very unlike her. After thinking she had PTSD from her traumatic death experience at the end of last season, it was revealed this week that May not only lost the ability to feel her own emotions, but she can now feel other people’s emotions by touching them. In a recent interview with SYFY Wire, Wen spoke about what’s she’s learned from playing May for seven years, and talked about the struggle of having to play her with even less emotion than before.

“Just when you think she couldn’t feel less and show less, she does,” Wen shared. “It’s very tough as an actor to play that, trust me. I mean when they told me what was going to happen, I was like, ‘Really, you’re going to go in that direction? How is that even possible? How do I show less?’” She added, “Right, it really was,” when asked if it was a challenge. “I asked Joel Stoffer, who plays Enoch, ‘What are some things that I can do to turn off all emotions?’ Because even Enoch has more emotions and opinions than May. I think it’s just in the eyes, more or less, where if I just maintain a deadness to her eyes… that was my starting point. Because even when she spoke she couldn’t have any emotions and it was very challenging.”

Hopefully, we’ll find out more about May’s new abilities in next week’s episode, which is set to take place in the 1970s and feature a guest appearance by Patrick Warburton as General Rick Stoner. Many fans were hoping Peggy Carter would turn up on the series and interact with Daniel Sousa (Enver Gjokaj) one more time now that he’s joined Agents of SHIELD, but Hayley Atwell recently shut down any hope of that happening. Considering Peggy now believes Sousa is dead, we’re not exactly surprised by this outcome. Recently, Chloe Bennet (Daisy Johnson/Quake) teased that there will “definitely” be more surprise appearances in the final season, so we compiled a list of some of the major Agents of SHIELD players we’d like to see again.

Agents of SHIELD airs Wednesday nights on ABC at 10 PM EST.