Marvel revealed Adrian Pasdar (Heroes) will join the cast of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as Major Glenn Talbot in April.
Major Talbot has hunted the Hulk for decades in the comics.
Pasdar revealed how he got the role from his work with Executive Producer Jeph Loeb on the animated series (He’s the voice of Tony Stark on Iron Man and Avengers Assemble) and how he prepped for the role with Marvel.com.
“I did my research that I [normally] do which is pretty in-depth and obviously pretty easy to do with a character like this. The best part of the whole thing is that I was actually in Toys”R”Us with my nine-year old in Times Square. We were in New York for the Super Bowl, and that’s when I got a call from Jeph. [My son] heard me very patiently talk to Jeph and as soon as I hung up, my little boy Beckett said, “What’s the job, Dad? What’s the job?” and I said, “Well, do you know Colonel Talbot?” and he said, “Glenn Talbot? Yeah, everybody does.” I said, “Well, they asked me to play him.” He said, “Well, dad. Here’s what we gotta do. We gotta go to Midtown Comics right away because you know the guy on the second floor with the beard?” I said, “Yeah.” “We’ve gotta find him and ask him what he thinks and his questions. He’ll help you out.”
So we left Toys”R”Us and made our way to 40th and 7th and went upstairs, and my man that I was looking for wasn’t there but there’s no shortage of help. I go in there a lot whenever I’m back home with my kids, they’re big comic book fans, so they know me fairly well. I’m not sure if, as a dad they know me, or I know that they know me from some jobs that I’ve done. But whatever it is, the combination, they’re always very helpful and very nice. So we went in there and in no time at all, I had no shortage of guys helping me out finding everything I could about Talbot. And oddly enough, one of them was embarrassed that he had to dig into a database. He looked at me like, “I’m so sorry, dude. I’m going to have to dig in.” He had to go to the phone in his hands. I said, “Hey man, it’s cool. We’re both learning and I couldn’t do this without you. You’re a huge part of what I’m going through right now in trying to figure out who this guy is.” I certainly don’t want to approach it [like some shows approach] legal dramas, where they just base it on what’s come before. Not that it has anything to do with real courtrooms. Anybody who’s been in a real courtroom will tell you it’s nothing like the movies.”
As you can see Pasdar is sporting Talbott’s signature mustache and military uniform like in the comic books.
“It’s hard to look serious in that hat, man. You look like a New Jersey State Trooper if you wear it wrong. Nothing wrong with New Jersey State Troopers, but the outfits are a little funny. Just wearing that Air Force hat, you really gotta be able to pull that off. That was the hardest part. But the moustache, we spent a long time on that, a couple of days. That was probably a thorn in the side to make-up and hair people. I had a week to prepare and as macho as I like to think I am, there’s just no way I can grow that mustache in a week so we had to cut up a $400 dollar mustache and try it on knowing that it might fail and there’s not always room to do that in the make-up department.
So anyway, we came through and it was fun to be on the set and work with these folks on the show. The way that they filmed [my scene] was very interesting. It was a live feed. [Coulson’s team are] in the control room and I come over a monitor. So I was filming it in another room off of a camera, [and] it was a live feed to them in that room, so it was really happening. It was in-camera, it wasn’t going to be superimposed, so my face would come on eight feet tall and six feet wide. I don’t know how much people can handle of that. I’m glad I didn’t have to look at it. But it was fun to be able to talk into the camera, and they had a microphone set up and a speaker so I could hear their responses and we played the scene out in real time. It’s kind of like a throwback to old television, where they would go from room to room with the camera. They’d go from Camera A to Camera B and then come back on to Camera A and then move over to Set 3 and it’d all be happening in real time.”
In the comics Major Talbot worked for General Thaddeus Ross (father of Bruce Banner’s great love, Betty.) It was Talbot who informed Ross that Bruce was the Hulk, making Banner a fugitive. Betty and Talbot would marry but wouldn’t stay together. Josh Lucas played Talbot in the Hulk movie.
Could this mean more characters from the Hulk corner of the Marvel Universe could appear on the series? Stay tuned!
Pasdar was the voice on Hawkeye on The Super Hero Squad. One of my all-time favorite but cancelled too soon series was Profit in which he played a slick, ruthless corporate executive who was pure evil and psychotic.
Watch for Pasdar on Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Tuesdays at 8pm on ABC in April.
No official word on if Pasdar will return in Heroes Reborn. (Here’s a link to the Heroes series if you want to catch up.)
By Editor