Anthony Mackie Wrote Letters Asking to Play Black Panther, Joined Marvel Not Knowing It Was for the Falcon Instead: ‘I’m Like, Really?’
Anthony Mackie revealed in a new interview with Inverse that he wrote Marvel Studios multiple letters asking to play Black Panther before he joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Sam Wilson a.k.a. the Falcon. Mackie figured the only prominent Black superhero Marvel might develop a movie for is Black Panther, so he put all his cards on playing T’Challa.
“I had been contacting Marvel a lot about Black Panther,” Mackie said. “I had written them letters. I was trying to find a way to make them make Black Panther. And I wanted to be Black Panther because growing up I fucking loved Black Panther.”
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Mackie landed a meeting with longtime Marvel producer Nate Moore and directors Joe and Anthony Russo, who were developing “Captain America: The Winter Solider” at the time. No one told Mackie what part they were meeting him for at the time, so he just presumed it was for Black Panther.
“I’ll never forget, Joe Russo said, ‘Listen, so we’re doing this movie. We want you to be in it. We can’t say what character you’re playing or who else is going to be in it. Would you do it?’ And that was it,” Mackie remembered. “I was like, ‘You know what, I like y’all dudes. I’ll do it. I’ll go on this ride with you.’”
When the offer to join the MCU came through, Mackie was shocked it was for the Falcon instead of for Black Panther.
“What other major comic book figure has enough of a presence to have his own movie?” Mackie said. “So when they hit me up and they were like, ‘Yo, so it’s Sam Wilson,’ I’m like, ‘Really?’”
Marvel ended up making its own “Black Panther” movie with the late Chadwick Boseman in the role. Mackie debuted as Falcon in 2014’s “The Winter Soldier” and went on to reprise the character in tentpoles such as “Ant-Man” (2015), “Captain America: Civil War” (2016), “Avengers: Infinity War” (2018) and “Avengers: Endgame” (2019). He then got his own Disney+ series, “The Falcon and the Winter Solider,” which set up his character as the new Captain America. Wilson will star in the upcoming Marvel movie, “Captain America: Brave New World,” which is in production in Atlanta.
“There’s a huge amount of pressure,” Mackie told Inverse about leading his own Marvel movie for the first time. “You throw my dumb ass in the water, and you’re like, ‘Swim.’ I’m like, ‘Shit.’ But at the same time, it’s all in the state of mind. I’ve been given a great cast. I’ve been given a great group of people who I’ve worked with before.”
One person who knows Mackie can lead a Marvel movie is Chris Evans, the former Captain America actor who gave up the shield at the end of “Endgame.”
“His energy and his versatility. Both as a person and as an actor,” Evans said. “I’ve never seen him tired, and there’s nothing he can’t do. He’s a true Renaissance man.”
“Captain America: Brave New World” is set for release on May 3, 2024.
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