As you can imagine when you have to summon a force like that together, the opposing elements are pretty freaking gnarly. I would think of those pioneer movies where they've got the cook and the ladies loading the guns and firing at the surrounded wagons. I don't put Coulson in that category, I think he is on the upper tier of people who come to scrap at situations like that but everybody's involved.

I felt like people really do their best work when they're having a really good time and feel safe to push the envelope and make a jackass out of themselves.

There's always changes in the way they do that in the cinematic universe. I think, with the S.H.I.E.L.D. 2.0, you're seeing some of the first ripples of those different points of view on what S.H.I.E.L.D. should be when it's rebuilt. I'm very, very curious to know which side Coulson will end up on in that struggle.

As a fanboy myself, one of the fun things about the gig has been every time I get a new script, I get to find out more about his day - to-day life and what goes on and what his relationships are.

The tremendous Jeremy Latcham from Marvel showed up with this one-of-a-kind animated encyclopedia about S.H.I.E.L.D. and The Avengers. Coulson wasn't a part of the comic books, which is a singular thing about him that I thought would get me killed off very quickly, but luckily, it didn't. It just became a thing that I fit into, and they kept finding new and better uses for me.

The great thing about Coulson is that he's a little bit like a party game, where the next person who gets ahold of him gets to write another sentence. I'm constantly learning more and more about the guy.

There's a different set of writers and a different director for the films, but Marvel has turned it into a pretty spectacular job.