A few weeks ago, Anthony Mackie got the passcode to read the upcoming script for Captain America: New World Order. During an appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show, Mackie describes procedures for reading Marvel scripts, which seem to require about the same security clearance as nuclear code access. “We literally get a passcode to a website that gives us a location,” he explained. The actors then go “to meet the person to sign, to sit with a computer, and read our script.”
It seems like literally nobody at Marvel thinks much of the trustworthiness of their actors. “They don’t trust nobody,” said Mackie. He describes the dismissive way that people treat him when he does arrive to read the script, saying that they complain about the speed at which he reads.
This isn’t the first time people have complained about these measures. Zoe Saldana, who had to take an Instagram down of herself flipping through a script, said to InStyle that the secrecy “can be annoying sometimes.” Joe and Anthony Russo said to Rotten Tomatoes that Robert Downey Jr. was likely the only person who saw the full Endgame script, while every other actor was given their parts piecemeal. Recently, Bloomberg reports that Disney is currently trying to figure out who leaked the Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania transcript on Reddit.
What makes all of this infinitely sillier is the fact that most of these films are based on comic books and storylines that have been circulation for years, if not a decade. What is the point? Spoilers only exist for those who are online (and most time only exist for folks who seek them out), and don’t affect a huge majority of the audience. It seems wildly self-important to demand this level of secrecy rather than just trusting your actors. Marvel actors deserve better.
Mackie, who plays Sam Wilson, the man who took up the Captain America mantle after Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) retired, has previously played this current iteration of Captain America opposite Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes in the Disney+ television show, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.