Tatiana Maslany & Ginger Gonzaga on Breaking the Fourth Wall

The nine-episode Disney+ comedy series She-Hulk: Attorney At Law follows 30-something attorney Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany), who would rather be focused on her court cases when she suddenly finds herself to be a green 6-foot-7-inch superpowered Hulk receiving mentorship from her cousin Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) for how to be the best Hulk that she can be. Specializing in superhuman-oriented legal cases might help her achieve career success, but it won’t help sort out her complicated dating life or keep her family from needing her to do mundane tasks that involve heavy lifting.

During this press conference to promote the new series, co-stars Maslany and Ginger Gonzaga (who plays Jen’s best friend, Nikki Ramos) talked about what sets She-Hulk apart as a character, what made them want to join this specific world, why the friendship between Jen and Nikki is so special, finding the chemistry between Jen and Bruce, breaking the fourth wall, what makes Jen so relatable, and what they hope the series inspires.

Question: Tatiana, how did you feel when you heard that you would be going from heels to Hulk, as MCU’s newest superhero?

TATIANA MASLANY: Heels to Hulk? I never wore heels, so this is going from shoes to heels to Hulk, and back again. Going to the courtroom was really exciting. That was fun to step into. What’s so great about the show is that it has all those huge Marvel elements to it and there are big set pieces. However, we also deal with She-Hulk swipe dating and helping her dad carry stuff into the garage. It’s those little sweet moments that really made me excited to do this show.

Ginger, your character, Nikki Ramos, is such a great BFF. Is she the kind of person that you would hang out with in real life?

GINGER GONZAGA: Yes. I would hang out with Nikki in real life. Shamefully, I do feel like I’m cheating on this show. I feel like Nikki is pretty similar to me. But yeah, I like Nikki. She’s very free. She’s that person you want, who can get away with anything, and who encourages you to do whatever.

When you first got the call that you were going to be a part of this project, what was your reaction, and what did you do to celebrate?

GONZAGA: I was very excited, but it was juxtaposed with the fact that my puppy had just relieved herself in my living room. I was like, “Wow, I’m gonna be in the Marvel-verse! One sec, let me clean up after my puppy that I haven’t trained.” It was a very humbling thing for me.

Jen and Nikki’s friendship is a huge part of this show. What do you guys enjoy most about exploring their dynamic?

GONZAGA: I love that they’re female friends who actually care about each other and love each other, and who have some sense of emotional maturity to their life. But also, it’s a really good balance because Jen, as Jen, is by the book. She’s safe. She knows what she’s doing with her life, and she has all these goals. And Nikki is just very reckless and free, but in a fun way. I can light fires and 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 them to get into a lot of trouble. Nikki’s love language to Jen is always trying to make her laugh. Nothing is too serious for Nikki. She thinks she can get out of any situation, especially if she has a six-foot-seven superhero as a friend. She’s like, “My friend will clean up the pieces. I just get the party started.”

Tatiana, what was it like to find that chemistry between Bruce and Jen?

MASLANY: It’s easy, when Mark comes to set. Mark and I are doing these scenes where we’re like siblings, ripping each other, but who also love each other very much. It was a very easy dynamic to bring to camera because it just was right. It just made sense. And I feel like a lot of the characters in this show have that ring of truth that’s very easy to bring.

How do you feel about the use of the breaking of the fourth wall, throughout this series?

MASLANY: There’s something about She-Hulk’s awareness, where she’s able to go from being Jen to She-Hulk with a seamlessness. Her consciousness stays the same, and she’s aware of the audience. That feels like it’s her superpower, being engaged in the meta element. It’s an extension of her superpower. She’s like, “I know I’m talking to camera. I know you guys are watching this.” And there’s something about that super hyper-awareness that is who she is.

GONZAGA: And I feel like the audience gets a Nikki experience with that because she’s referring almost to a friend. It feels very friend-like. Nikki always gets to be on the inside, so she gets those asides, as Nikki, but the audience also gets to experience that.

We see the dating struggles that Jen is going through. If you were Jen’s best friend, which superhero would you try to set her up with?

MASLANY: Batman from the Adam West series. I love that show and I wanna do scenes with him.

GONZAGA: That’s so funny. If I were to imagine, Groot seems like he needs a little bit of love.

How did your experience in Hall H during San Diego Comic-Con feel, in front of that audience?

MASLANY: I blacked out completely.

GONZAGA: Same.

MASLANY: I was shaking before we got out there. I remember the feeling that we all had, which was just buzzy, giggly, excited, and just so thrilled that we got to do this. And then, there was this very warm crowd, who really does know everything about this universe, way more than some of us do.

GONZAGA: Yeah, we just took a quiz the other day, and we know nothing.

MASLANY: We both failed.

GONZAGA: But they were so welcoming. They were also like, “Okay, let’s see what this is.” There was a fun interchange there, to be able to present the trailer to them. We all laid on the ground and watched it on the big screen with them, and that was really fun.

Tatiana, what was a valuable piece of advice that you received from Mark Ruffalo, when it came to playing She-Hulk?

MASLANY: Mark was so open to whatever my process was with coming to She-Hulk. He never was prescriptive. But one thing I did witness him do was, he was lying down outside as Bruce and he gets up as Hulk. From a lying down position, he’s suddenly standing. It looked incompletely inhuman. I was like, “Oh, that’s 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.” I was like, “Oh, cool, I wanna be able to do that sometime.”

She-Hulk is better equipped than most to accept her new superhero lifestyle. What did you find most relatable about Jennifer Walters?

MASLANY: It was actually 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, and then when this thing happens to her, she has to contend with a whole other perception being placed on top of her, with societal expectations for how she should be and who she should be. And so, to navigate those two versions, the outside perception of her, was super interesting to me. Honestly, when I read the pilot, I wanted so badly to audition for this because it’s so funny and it’s so mundane and small, in a way that I’ve always dreamed of watching a superhero show that had those between moments where you’re checking your phone, or whatever. That, to me, is engaging cinema. I like that.

What do you hope audiences take away from this series?

GONZAGA: I really hope that someone, somewhere out there makes She-Hulk dog costumes because I’ve been googling them for myself and for Tatiana’s dog, and I have yet to find them. This is a cry for help from Ginger Gonzaga for She-Hulk dog costumes, size Chihuahua wiener dog. I’m gonna manifest it.

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is available to stream at Disney+.