Hypable spoke to Luke Cage‘s Mike Colter and Cheo Hodari Coker about the trials and triumphs of Marvel’s newest Netflix series.
“A television writer once told me,” the Luke Cage showrunner laughs, “Never name a show a lead actor. “With the exception of Mike Colter!”
Moving against advice for the orthodoxies of Marvel may seem like a challenge for Coker, but the Luke Cage showrunner knows when to challenge the norm.
“I know that, because of the comic book, everyone’s thinking ‘Hero for Hire,'” Coker says of his series. “But what we wanted to do with season one is, you have someone that’s reluctant to even be a hero, [so] hat pulls somebody out of the shadows? And once they’re out of the shadows, what are they gonna sacrifice? And even in sacrificing that thing, what’s going to keep them pushing forward?”
Questions of formative heroism and coming into power are central in Coker’s mind, and in the mind of actor Mike Colter, who plays Luke. Like other Marvel heroes, Luke Cage will take on the role reluctantly — he is, Coker says, “not happy to have [his] powers.”
According to Colter, Cage will begin his arc in his own series with few demands from life, though life will demand much from him. Luke is just trying to “do the normal things that people do,” Colter says. “He doesn’t want all the attention that comes with being a superhero, which is a part of the series.”
“Once he does step out of the shadows and he takes a hold of the superhero position,” Colter says, “What does that mean for his life?” Adopting the mantle of hero means that “In a sense, you’re a role model. I mean, who wants to be looked up to?… Luke does not want that attention.”
“But that’s the thing,” Coker says of Cage. “He does it anyway… he cannot just ‘lay back and cut it,’ as he puts it. He really has to accept the responsibility of heroism. And heroism’s tough.”
Luke’s journey, from love interest left dazed by the events of Jessica Jones to lead of his own series, will be one that is shaped more by Coker and Colter and than direct inspiration from character’s comic history.
“We really wanted something… that was forward-thinking, modern, and adaptable to what’s happening today,” Coker says — though he teases an appearance of 1970’s “chain belts and tiaras” over the course of the series.
According to Colter, he felt relieved by the freedom Coker was given to craft the story and characters of Luke Cage. The history, Colter says, “is only applicable to a certain point. We’re taking about 2016. So what Cheo was able to do [was] create a world using the characters that already pre-existed, and then fleshing them out, expanding on them, making it work the way he thought it should work, to create a story that we were trying to tell that was of 2016.”
“So this is a Luke Cage that has been reinvented, in a sense, and that was what excited me,” Colter says, noting that he was eager for the series to reflect modern issues. “The problems we deal with right now are real problems, and so I felt like it would be necessary to have a guy who was dealing with the world from real standpoint of like, ‘I need to figure out how I’m going to get from one day to the next, and what my struggle is.'”
Luke’s struggles — his fugitive status, the death of his wife, and the burden of survival in a vibrant but violent Harlem — are all elements that Colter feels contribute both his humanity and his heroism.
“That’s what makes him relatable,” the actor enthuses. “He’s fallen on hard times for reasons not of his own making. He needs a job, he needs to figure out how to make ends meet.”
“I always say, its a journey of a man and a superhero, and simultaneously as he grows, he finds out who he is,” Colter continues. “And sometimes he needs other people to help him find out who he is… they know more about him as a person because they’ve observed him, and he’s gonna learn from that. And in learning from that, he’s gonna start teaching other people about themselves.”
Therein, Colter feels, lies Luke’s true superpower, beyond strength, invincibility, or bravery.
“It’s kind of like holding a mirror to yourself, because he wants to create superheroes out of everybody,” Colter says. “He’s not trying to be the superhero for Harlem. He’s trying to get Harlem, as a society and as indivduals, to start standing up and doing things the right way. And that’s how you change a community — one person at a time.”
Marvel’s Luke Cage premieres on Netflix on Sept. 30.