What happens when you put a couple of reformed super-soldiers in a room with an ex-assassin, a mercenary, and a corrupt contessa? Nothing good. But that’s the premise of Thunderbolts, Marvel’s newest superhero team-up movie starring Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Sebastian Stan, and more, which features a group of misfit anti-heroes reluctantly forced to team up by CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (played by a returning Julia Louis-Dreyfus). The result looks to be one of Marvel’s most electrifying new movies — a movie that breaks more than a few rules of the MCU, not the least of which is Thunderbolts’ unique team dynamic.
“I don't know that any of 'em get along,” David Harbour, who plays Red Guardian in Thunderbolts, tells Inverse.
There might be one or two friendly relationships — Red Guardian raised Yelena Belova (Pugh) as his daughter, after all — but apart from that, the team seems destined to butt heads the entire movie. All the trailers show them constantly fighting each other, when they’re not working to secure the mysterious subject at the center of their mission. Harbour, who is currently promoting his other new superhero role, Eric Frankenstein in Creature Commandos, teases a team dynamic that is full of “provocation.”
“They're thrust together as the worst people in the worst situations,” Harbour says. “I think that's the fun of the movie is that it’s the opposite of a love triangle. This person hates this person, hates this person, hates this person, and is annoyed and wants to get rid of this person.”
But Harbour has nothing but love for his costars, whom he says he “instantly connected with” and felt instant chemistry with. “It really translates on the screen,” Harbour adds.
It’s almost a happy accident that Harbour managed to become part of such a close-knit team (off camera, anyway). Harbour reveals that when he was cast in Black Widow around four years ago, he didn’t know who Red Guardian was. But “the way it was written in the script and how it functioned within this particular cinematic relationships with some of those things were revelation,” Harbour says. “So I said... I just want to play this guy.”
Harbour’s enthusiasm for the character is palpable in the lead-up to Thunderbolts. But we’ll have to see how that plays out onscreen next year.
