SHE-HULK

It's not easy being green. Just ask Jennifer Walters, the reluctant hero in Marvel's new legal comedy SHE-HULK: ATTORNEY AT LAW. Total Film speaks to the show's dream team about feminism, Fleabag and finding the MCU's funny bone.

- JAMES MOTTRAM

From the sitcom-smashing WandaVision to the metaverse-bending antics of Loki and the downright WTF weirdness of Moon Knight, the MCU’s small-screen output has taught us one thing: expect the unexpected. So back in December 2020, when Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige revealed that new Disney+ show She-Hulk: Attorney At Law was going to be a “half-hour legal comedy”, fans took it in their stride.

First appearing in Marvel Comics in 1980, She-Hulk is the green-hued alter-ego of Jennifer Walters, cousin to scientist Bruce Banner. Taking an emergency blood transfusion from him, she inherits some of his unique abilities – turning green, muscling up. But unlike Banner’s rage-fuelled Hulk, she retains her intelligence and personality when she transforms. “She’s angry in a different way!” laughs She-Hulk head writer Jessica Gao, when Total Film meets her over Zoom.

With Feige confirming that Walters/SheHulk would be played by Orphan Black star Tatiana Maslany, the die was cast for what will surely be one of the most unique MCU projects to date. “That was always the needle that we were trying to thread – how do we have something that really is a half-hour legal comedy and feels a little bit like Ally McBeal, but still exists within the Marvel Cinematic Universe?” says lead director Kat Coiro, speaking poolside in sunny L.A. “That was the challenge.”

In the writers’ room, the legal eagle references were less Ally McBeal and more The Good Fight and Better Call Saul. Then there were more leftfield nods. “We talked a lot about