Marvel’s She-Hulk Actor Teases Spider-Man Connection

Superheroes need a super lawyer — and if you’re Augustus “Pug” Pugliese (Josh Segarra), you become a super-lawyer because of a superhero. The Arrow star, who joins the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Marvel Studios legal comedy series She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, confirms his GLK&H lawyer was inspired to practice superhuman law after being saved by Spider-Man (played by Tom Holland). Like in the comics, Pug is a Shulkie-crushing lawyer for the firm Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzberg & Holliway, who represents superhumans after the wall-crawler saves him from the mob. 

“Pug is paying his way through law school by being a bouncer at clubs. And one night, he gets saved by Spider-Man. He gets jumped, and he gets saved, so he decides to dedicate himself to superhero law,” Segarra told Deadline. “He wants to protect superheroes. That’s who Pug is. He’s here and he’s perfected his craft, best lawyer in the world. Then he gets to meet his hero, She-Hulk? Let’s go.” 

She-Hulk executive producer and head writer Jessica Gao previously revealed the half-hour legal comedy couldn’t use Spider-Man — for legal reasons. (Sony holds the live-action rights to Spider-Man and his connected comic book characters.) 

“There were a lot of characters from the comics — we wanted a lot of the comics for characters for fun situations where we could bring in like a character and think of like funny reasons why they would be in legal trouble,” Gao told TheDirect. “But there were a lot of characters that were from the comics that we couldn’t use either because of a rights issue, or there were a few times where it was because Marvel… all they would say is that they had other plans. And that’s all they would tell us. And then, we tried very, very hard to poke, and prod, and get a little bit more information. Of course, they wouldn’t tell us.”

While Bruce Banner/Smart Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Sorcerer Supreme Wong (Benedict Wong), and Daredevil (Charlie Cox) are among the superheroes set to appear in the nine-episode first season of She-Hulk, Gao said, “The one MCU character that really bummed out a lot of the writers in our room that we couldn’t use was Spider-Man and anyone involved in the Spider-Man universe. Because we had so many Spider-Man fans in the room.”

Starring Tatiana Maslany as Jennifer Walters/She-Hulk, Jameela Jamil as Titania, Ginger Gonzaga as Nikki Ramos, Josh Segarra as Augustus “Pug” Pugliese, Jon Bass as Todd, Renée Elise Goldsberry as Mallory Book, Tim Roth as the Abomination, and Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner/Smart Hulk, Marvel Studios’ She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is streaming August 18 on Disney+, with new episodes premiering on Thursdays.