A Superhero's New Mission

Chris Evans hung up his Captain America shield. Now he and his partners want to help Generation Z reshape the U.S. political landscape

- By David H. Freedman

Members of congress get a lot of calls from people wanting things, most of which receive polite regrets from staffers. But lately one particular call is consistently getting past the gatekeepers: the one from Chris Evans. Yes, that Chris Evans. For a year and a half, the 39-year-old megastar (he turns 40 on June 13), best known for playing Captain America in the Marvel movies, has been quietly working the halls of the Capitol, occasionally in person, in an effort to persuade senators and representatives to put aside their hyper-partisan hyperbole and explain, in under two minutes, their views on politics and policy to a new generation of young potential voters.

The two-minute interviews are posted to A Starting Point, an app and website that Evans co-founded with director and actor Mark Kassen and Joe Kiani, a health care entrepreneur and philanthropist. Politicos talking policy may seem like heavy fare for the TikTok cohort, but the venture has so far defied gravity. It has more than 140,000 Instagram followers and 72,000 followers on Twitter—big numbers for politics-only content, especially given the site’s non-partisan approach. (In spite of the focus on the TikTok generation, A Starting Point isn’t active there, conceding that territory to younger posters.) “I love the idea of getting concise information from the people who are most involved in the political process, in their own words, without any journalistic spin,” says Evans. “This is about understanding who these people in office are, and how they’re voting.”