{"id":490279,"date":"2026-06-09T08:09:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T08:09:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/490279\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T08:09:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T08:09:22","slug":"marvels-wonder-man-kept-its-hollywood-dreams-in-l-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/490279\/","title":{"rendered":"Marvel\u2019s \u2018Wonder Man\u2019 Kept Its Hollywood Dreams in L.A."},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Running: Emmy Contenders in Conversation With The Ankler is a special series<\/a> hosted by Prestige Junkie\u2019s Katey Rich, Ankler Media awards editor. She chats with top talent from Disney networks and streaming platforms \u2014 including ABC, Disney+, FX and Hulu. In the Running is presented by Disney.<\/p>\n

Shooting Disney and Marvel Television\u2019s Wonder Man in Los Angeles wasn\u2019t just a boon for creators Destin Daniel Cretton and Andrew Guest and the cast and crew, but the reason the show even existed in the first place.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the genesis of the idea,\u201d Cretton says. The comedy series focuses on a struggling actor named Simon Williams (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) who is forced to hide his superhero abilities due to a government mandate that bans enhanced individuals from working in the entertainment industry.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe built the entire show around this industry \u2013 what would Hollywood look like in the MCU,\u201d Cretton continues. \u201cIt would have been ridiculous to shoot somewhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, \u201cIt was a dream because Marvel very rarely does L.A.,\u201d adds Guest. \u201cAnd this crew became very tight because we worked on either side of the strikes. It was over a year of all being together, and it was a project that felt personal to all of us because it was about all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Destin<\/p>\n

\t\tDestin Daniel Cretton Photographed by Austin Hargrave for The Ankler<\/p>\n

That connection between the workers on set and the city was also paramount, Cretton says. \u201cThere\u2019s no better crew than the crew in Los Angeles. A lot of the people who were working on our show were third-generation doing their jobs. They learned from their mom or dad, and that type of expertise is just so wonderful to have on our show in a story that is highlighting the work that they do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Told across eight episodes, Wonder Man tracks Simon\u2019s efforts to break big alongside his burgeoning friendship with Trevor Slattery (Sir Ben Kingsley), a disgraced actor who quite literally played the role of supervillain Mandarin in the 2013 Marvel film Iron Man 3 (as revealed in that film, Slattery was hired to play Mandarin as a subterfuge for the real villain of the story). Slattery later returned to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a supporting character in 2021\u2019s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, directed by Cretton.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs far as chemistry between our two actors, that\u2019s something you can never bet on,\u201d says Guest, who previously worked on Community and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. \u201cLuckily, Destin already had this incredible relationship with Sir Ben, and I think that loosened him up. And Yahya was so thrilled to work with Destin \u2014 I feel like Destin was able to sort of bring them together on camera.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Andrew<\/p>\n

\t\tAndrew Guest Photographed by Austin Hargrave for The Ankler<\/p>\n

Cretton, for his part, \u201cfelt very lucky to be able to just watch these two grow together,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was less about them becoming friends off camera and hanging out and going to meals and clubs together, and more about watching them really learn to respect each other in the work and create this chemistry on camera.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a bit of a meta twist, Wonder Man ends its first season with Simon landing his dream role: playing the superhero Wonder Man in a big-screen adaptation of the comic book.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing I really wanted for the audience to feel was to care about Simon getting a role in a movie \u2014 and let it feel like life-or-death stakes to us, because it is to Simon, having that moment of breaking in. If we could communicate that, I felt like we were doing our job,\u201d Guest says. \u201cHollywood always feels like a difficult place to make a living and pursue your dreams.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the Running: Emmy Contenders in Conversation With The Ankler is a special series hosted by Prestige Junkie\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":490280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[9618,93,61,60,2563,270,49388],"class_list":["post-490279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-disney","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-marvel","tag-movies","tag-wonder-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}