The instant likability of Wyatt Russell is hard to deny, but perhaps even harder to explain. As the son of the legendary Kurt Russell, the younger Russell has a kind of instant familiarity and an everyman feeling in nearly all his roles. When Wyatt Russell shows up in a genre project — from Black Mirror to Marvel — he’s the kind of guy you want to root for right away, but also seems like an old friend. He’s also an action hero with a twinkle in his eye, as if Captain Kirk were the guy paying for your beers. But in the Marvel universe, where he plays John Walker, and in Apple TV’s Monsterverse series, Monarch, where he plays Lee Shaw, he’s also a very specific brand of reluctant hero, an archetype that he both embodies and has invented for himself. “I'm able to give this character the things that I want to be able to give this character, then you have the right guy,” Russell says of his process in finding the vibe of the men he plays. This year, Russell is silently dominating the science fiction world, returning as John Walker in Avengers: Doomsday, as well as Steven Spielberg’s upcoming alien invasion film, Disclosure Day. He’s also going to be in the Monarch world for a while; his timey-wimey Lee Shaw is getting a new spinoff set in the 1980s, full of monsters, nostalgia, and more. |
