You can never discount the pleasure of showing up to work with Scarlett Johansson and now Cobie Smulders. That's just a day that's easy on your eyes.

Because I'm stern and scolding [the characters] sometimes, I'm sure I'll get a ton of grief.

I was a football player at college and dislocated my thumb. I was out for a bit and passed the theatre and saw some lovely drama students walking into an audition for 'Much Ado About Nothing' and thought: 'That's what I'll do when I recover.' I joined that production and was hooked.

To go from Jon Favreau for Iron Man 1 and 2 to Kenneth Branagh for Thor and the very different world of Thor, it's about how to adapt to Coulson in a different setting and a different world while, at the same time, still have him be a part of the same world.

I think about it, and I realize there's been some version of a Batman or Spiderman or Superman franchise since I was a boy, since before I was a boy.

I'm not secretly on the board of Marvel.

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.