As published on ctv.ca

Sept. 20, 2016

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Clark Gregg on what to expect from ‘Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ now that Coulson isn’t director

Fans of “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” best brace themselves for more change when the series returns for its fourth season Sept. 20 on CTV.

Specifically, Phil Coulson, played by Clark Gregg, will no longer be director, as was revealed in the season three finale.

When Gregg stopped by CTV for the new season preview in June, even he didn’t know who would take on the new director role.

“Perhaps it’s just because of what’s going on in the political climate of my country, but it would be nice to see a woman in charge,” he said. “And by the same point, if she’s some government pawn that doesn’t really know anything about S.H.I.E.L.D., then that’ll be uncomfortable.”

We’ve since learned Jason O’Mara’s character will assume the position, though we know relatively little else about his role.

Read on to find out how Gregg feels about the big changes ahead of Coulson and the darker direction of season four. 

Did you ever expect when you played this role in “Iron Man” in 2008 that you’d be going into season four with him at the centre of a TV series? 
Never did that occur to me… To be here about to go into season four of a television show kind of with an incredible ensemble but centered around Phil Coulson, I can’t believe it all these movies and seasons later.

Is it still interesting all these years later?
I keep waiting for it to get boring but it never does. It’s exciting and fun… The writers, they just continue to tear the thing down and rebuild the show and it keeps getting better and more fans seem to get behind it all the time. You do your normal dramatic scenes and then you also have some scenes that are funny and then you have a huge fight scene with some weird looking aliens. If I had designed a job for myself that I would still be getting to do at this point in my career, I couldn’t have done better.

How did you react to discovering Coulson is not longer the director?
I just read that tag scene at the end of the [finale] episode that was six months in the future and saw the line that said “Let’s all the director.” And I immediately picked up my phone said “Hey am I calling myself? What’s going on? Did I get demoted?” And they said “Yeah you’re not the director anymore.”

So I started doing my own theorizing and as a fan of this world and a fan of the tremendous “Civil War” movie that came out I saw that the government is registering superheroes… and I suspect S.H.I.E.L.D. will come out of the shadows, and I have a feeling be under government control, which means someone’s going to be appointed above Phil Coulson and he’ll be back to the grumpy field agent he always was. 

Will you miss being the director?
It was an honour to be the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. but I don’t think it was his deepest dream. I think in his heart he likes to go out on the missions and encounter terrifying mysterious other-worldly stuff.

Another major finale development is that Daisy’s gone. What does that mean for Coulson?
That’s heartbreaking for Coulson… They’ve had this horrible kind of fissure in their relationship and he feels responsible always for her. And I don’t think he’s going to rest well until she’s back in the fold.

There’s been talk that season four might get darker and moodier. Do you have any inkling of how that might play out?
I thought this season was so damn dark. And he lost the arm at the end of the year before. I just don’t know how it could get any darker. But that’s the nature of this world, it just works really well when it’s in a noir, darkness. With the sci-fi elements and the humour.

You recently took on a completely different role -- that of Britney Spears for your Lip Sync Battle. What inspired you to take on her hit “Toxic”?

It was mostly about what video would translate and when I saw the video for “Toxic” and remembered that she was in that fantastic flight attendant garb, I thought this was my destiny to be an androgynous flight attendant with a team of backup dancers. It was one of the great, most satisfying moments of my life, but it has been tragically burned into the memories of a lot of people who’d like to forget about it.