She-Hulk: Attorney At Law Embraces Meta Humor, Humanity, and Female Friendships

You’ll like her when she’s angry.

Marvel brings the Hulk’s cousin Jennifer Walters into the superhero fold with She-Hulk: Attorney At Law. The comedy series balances Jennifer’s complicated life as a single, 30-something attorney who also happens to be a green 6-foot-7-inch superpowered Hulk.

At the She-Hulk press conference, director and executive producer Kat Coiro shared what makes She-Hulk different from other Marvel shows. “The easy answer is that it’s a half-hour legal comedy, but it also has this huge cinematic scope and elements of drama, action, and suspense,” she said. “It really is a little bit of a peek behind the curtain at the everyday, sometimes even mundane life of a superhero.”

Jennifer Walters has been breaking the fourth wall in the comics since the late 1980s — well before Deadpool and Fleabag — so it was more of a matter of how, than if, she would in the TV show. “For me, I felt like first and foremost was the fourth wall breaking and the kind of meta humor and the self-awareness. ‘Cause it was the John Byrne run that made me fall in love with this character,” said head writer and executive producer Jessica Gao about what was most important in bringing She-Hulk to life. “It went through a lot of evolutionary steps. A long journey of, how much should she talk to camera? Is she talking directly to the audience? Is there another meta element? Is she talking to somebody else that’s more behind the scenes? At one point, there was an iteration in the scripts where, instead of really talking directly to camera, there were text boxes that were editor’s notes, like the comic books.”

Gao continued: “It was just so lighthearted and fun and refreshing. So that was always kind of a foundational element. And for me, because I come from TV comedy, the comedy was a priority. What’s great about having such an incredible cast is then it feels like you’re cheating a little bit as a writer because they come in and they really just imbue this humanity and this realness to these characters.”

When it came to choosing an actress to embody our leading green lady, Tatiana Maslany was the only option. “There was nobody else. There was really no other discussion. From her previous work, we knew that she had a range and could embody so many elements of the human experience. What's so interesting and different about Jennifer is […] she maintains her sense of self and yet her sense of self is influenced by the way she presents when she changes. It's a different way of walking through the world and so it required a nuance of performance that really only Tatiana could give,” said Gao, with Coiro adding: “The other wonderful thing about Tatiana is she has such a good instinct for characters and for the story because they really go hand in hand. There have been so many times where's she's kind of like pinpointed something that didn’t quite feel right just like instinctively, but also intellectually, and it was always right. It always forced us to work together to like get it to a better place that was more real and that was smarter and better.”

Maslany opened up about what intrigued her about the dual role of Jennifer Walters and She-Hulk. “It was her conflict with it that I found most interesting. Her resistance to it. She's built this life for herself that she does not wanna let go of. She's worked so hard to be a lawyer and she has to constantly prove herself,” she said. “And then when this thing happens to her, she has to contend with a whole other perception being placed on top of her and expectations societally of how she should be and who she should be.”

Mark Ruffalo appears in episodes to guide Jennifer in her newfound identity. “It was easy when Mark comes to set and it’s like Mark and I are doing these subling scenes where we’re ripping into each other but also love each other very much. It was a very easy dynamic,” said Maslany. “Mark was just so open to whatever my process was with [becoming] She-Hulk. He never was prescriptive.”

Maslany continued: “One thing I did witness him do was […] he was lying down outside as Bruce and he gets up as Hulk. Like truly, from a lying down position, he’s suddenly standing. […] It looked completely inhuman. I was like, oh, so that is what 10 years of playing this character and physically embodying him and being so inside of him [is like]. You get to do cool stuff like that.”

She-Hulk has been inspiring young women for decades. “I remember very vividly being a little girl and seeing the cover of a She-Hulk comic amidst the sea of male comics, and not knowing who she was or what this was, but knowing that I was moved by it,” said Coiro. “The idea of being large and in charge and taking control [and] taking up space was something that really resonated with me.”

Now the writers have a chance to spread that girl power through the TV series. You first see that energy come to life in the pilot episode when Jennifer wakes up after her first She-Hulk transformation and is supported and uplifted by a number of women at a local bar. “That scene was so important to me and there were so many times that it was on the chopping block because a lot of people didn’t understand it. I was like this is the single most important scene to me in this entire episode because truly — the women’s bathroom in any club, bar, strip club — any public women’s bathroom is the most safe, protective, and supportive environment,” said Gao. “Women are so often depicted as being catty and bitchy and that could be possibly be true outside of the bar, but the moment you're in the inner sanctum of the bathroom, women just want to help each other.”

That could’t be more true, especially when it comes to She-Hulk’s #1 fan: her best friend Nikki, played by Ginger Gonzaga. “They’re female friends who actually care about each other and love each other and have some sense of emotional maturity to their life,” said Gonzaga. “Nikki is just a very reckless and free, but in a fun way, you know? So, I can kinda light fires and I can encourage Jen to become She-Hulk, which is why, if She-Hulk ever saves the world, you can actually thank her good friend, Nikki. Behind every superhero, there is a catalyst best friend that’s encouraging you to get in a lot of trouble.”

New episodes of She-Hulk drop Thursdays on Disney+.