Secret Invasion Star Shocked By Series Premiere
Secret Invasion actress Cobie Smulders was surprised her characters fate was not leaked before the series premiered.
Leaks have become so prevalent in entertainment that fans are starting just to accept that the twists and turns of their favorite movies and shows will be spoiled for them ahead of time. That’s what makes (spoilers, obviously) the death of Maria Hill in the first episode of Marvel’s Secret Invasion so unique. Nobody saw it coming, something that surprised Hill actress Cobie Smulders to no end.
The 41-year-old Canadian actress recently talked to The Hollywood Reporter about her shock over the death going unspoiled for so long. Smulders told THR that there were several cast and crew members in attendance when she shot the scene at The Piece Hall in Halifax, West Yorkshire, including a large number of background artists.
By the grace of the Disney gods, not a single soul leaked Maria Hill’s death before the show debuted.
“There were a lot of people around, so I’m surprised that there wasn’t an image that got leaked. I guess that’s the respect that Marvel has earned over the last decade, which is like, ‘Don’t spoil it for people.’ And nobody did, thankfully,” Cobie Smulders told THR.
Despite Cobie Smulder’s faith in the reverence surrounding Marvel, several of the MCU‘s major plot points and cameos have been leaked in recent years. The inclusion of Toby Maguire and Andrew Garfield in Spider-Man: No Way Home is one major example. Leaked set photos of the two actors confirmed their involvement in the project long before the movie was released.
Spider-Man himself, Tom Holland, is frequently given fake or partial scripts on set due to his nasty habit of accidentally leaking details about Marvel projects.
Smulders remarked that she’d known the secret for a few years now and was honestly surprised that she didn’t pull a Holland and spill the beans herself. It almost sounds as if Cobie Smulders and the creative team behind Secret Invasion simply got lucky this time around.
The How I Met Your Mother actress also revealed her bittersweet feelings while filming Maria’s death scene, largely due to the identity of her murderer: Nick Fury.
Okay, so it was actually a Skrull known as Gravik impersonating Fury who shot Hill, but it doesn’t change the fact that on set, Samuel L. Jackson had to pretend to shoot Cobie Smulders as fake Fury one minute and then console her on her deathbed as real Fury the next.
“It was kind of weird on the day because that very violent moment was followed by a very emotional moment that Sam and I got to share,” admitted Smulders before explaining that she tried to focus on the tender moment with her old friend/boss than the violence that transpired right before it.
While Maria Hill’s death came as a huge shock to many Marvel fans, in a world of infinite variants, nobody is ever truly gone. When it comes to the multiverse and Cobie Smulders returning as an alternate version of Hill, the actress seems more than up for the idea.
The actress stated that she will always pick up when Marvel calls, but she honestly has no knowledge of any future plans for her character’s potential resurrection. Regardless of whether she returns or not, the actress is just happy to have been a part of the MCU for as long as she was.
Cobie Smulders described her 10 years playing Maria Hill as “amazing” and pointed to the fans as the best part of the whole experience. “They are so emotionally attached to these characters and this world, and so it’s just been really cool to be a small part of that,” Smulders said of Marvel fans.
