Hayley Atwell Talks AGENT CARTER, 'Captain America', 'Jarvis', And Role In The MCU

Well, this is one of the beauties of this show and how it grows through the season. It’s only been a year and she’s grieving him and I think what keeps her going is he was the greatest person she ever knew - even before he took the serum and became Captain America. She knew his character and she saw a kindred spirit in him. So I think she’s grieving the loss of him but she’s also determined to make sure that his work wasn’t in vain. That gives her a tremendous amount of determination to carry on despite the obstacles that she comes across. You see the personal struggles and the sacrifices that she had to make and you see her grief and that’s wonderful because you see the vulnerable side of Peggy. She becomes infinitely more relatable and more human because of that.

I think it’s kind of… they’re forced together. He’s been told that he has to work with her and be available to her. But I think, from her point of view, she doesn’t need any help. But she needs someone who is in contact with Howard to help kind of run this mission. So they have this very witty banter back and forth where she’s constantly having to go, “Look, dude, I don’t need your help! I am fine.” But it’s a lovely dynamic between them because they’re both British. They both have that wit and that satire. Their language is a game of chess back and forth. It’s a great game that they play and I think they get tremendous enjoyment out of it. And their relationship grows over the season. They become very close. They also provide the comic relief of the season. You see the serious aspects of what they have to do but then you have these great moments of comedy between them. He becomes like her comic sidekick.

Well, I think the great thing about the fact that I’ve already played her at the end of her life means that we know… she says in the scene she’s lead a full life and we know that she would have gotten married. She would have had children. She had a happy home life as well as a work life. That’s what’s great about the situation we have now, is that we have an opportunity, if the show does go into second and third and fourth and fifth season, we know that we can explore all of these aspects of her character because we know she lives such a long life and she’s had a fulfilled life. I think what’s going to start happening in Season 1 is seeds are going to be planted as to what happens in her personal life - and yet it’s still open to the possibility of new men coming into her life, deepening relationships with the men that we discover in Season 1. Obviously, the era is 1946 but in the second, third, fourth, fifth season --- if it goes onto that -- we can explore different time periods. We can explore the late forties, the early fifties, the sixties, the seventies, the eighties, up until present day, so it’s very exciting because of that.

The main thing for me, as an actor, is that I want variety. With a character like Peggy, because we know how long she lives and we know the worlds that she inhabits. It means there’s plenty of variety for me to explore different aspects of her character. She’s not just an action hero. She’s three-dimensional. She has losses and dreams and hopes and desires and fears and flaws in her character and frustrations and all of those things, which make up for me, kind of a dream role really.