Hayley Atwell: Peggy Carter Is Still an ‘Underserved Character’

Hayley Atwell and Tom Hiddleston recently concluded a run on the West End of William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. This is perhaps not a surprise. Both thespians have multiple Olivier nominations to their names and are veterans of the Bard, with Atwell at one time being a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. And yet, it was lost on perhaps no one that by casting these actors in Shakespeare’s frothiest comedy, iconoclastic theater director Jamie Lloyd was uniting the MCU’s Loki and Peggy Carter on the stage. In typical Lloyd fashion, there are even fourth-wall breaking winks to the fact, with at one point performers acting opposite a cutout of Hiddleston as Loki, and Hiddleston acting across a cutout of Atwell as Captain Carter… the super-powered version of Peggy from an alternate universe or two.

It was both amusing and ironic, especially since it was later confirmed that Hiddleston is headed back to the Marvel trenches for next year’s anticipated Avengers: Doomsday with the actor cast as Loki despite multiple variants of the character being killed off—and the one we last saw on the Disney+ series condemned to watch over the whole multiverse. Hence while preparing to sit down with Atwell ahead of her latest upcoming action movie, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, this connection got us wondering whether we might see not only Atwell again in the MCU but also as the hero in the cutout glimpsed in Much Ado. Might we see Captain Carter throw her mighty shield for more than a few seconds?

“I would love that,” Atwell says when asked if she’d like to see Captain Carter specifically in either of the upcoming Avengers sequels. “There are so many things that she could do, there’s so much more I feel I can bring to a character because I’ve developed as time’s gone on. What’s so great about having time behind you and having had a 20-year career so far is the development of skill, and I think there’s so much more that Peggy can do. She’s very much an underserved character.”

Captain Carter certainly has been underserved despite being a favorite among fans. This variant of the MCU’s Peggy received in alternate timelines the super serum formula that made Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers Captain America—hence the English Carter’s shield being Union Jack-bespoked. She appeared to great popularity in the animated Disney+ series What If… ? where Atwell voiced the character, and again in live-action, albeit as a bit of a punchline, in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness where another version of Captain Carter—plus Patrick Stewart’s Charles Xavier and John Krasinski’s Reed Richards—got wrecked by the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen). But the thing about timelines is no one is really ever gone (Stewart is already confirmed to come back as presumably a more regal Xavier in Doomsday).

And as Atwell points out, in all versions of Peggy’s story, there is a constant theme of being overlooked or underappreciated—such as working as a woman in Allied intelligence during World War II. Atwell even reminds us of a line Peggy had in Agent Carter.

Says Atwell, “When she says ‘I know my value and everyone else’s opinion doesn’t really matter,’ it’s because she hasn’t been given the platform that she knows she deserves and that she’s really capable of doing in the world. And so I just think there is just so much more that she can do, and I think she speaks to a modern time, so to be able to take her to that next level as Captain Carter would be phenomenal. Especially with all my Mission: Impossible training. I am ready, let’s go!’”

Atwell has indeed become a highlight of the most recent M:I films where she plays the enigmatic and mysterious Grace, a one-time pick pocket in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning who ends that film becoming a member of the IMF, the beloved and almost perpetually rogue spy group led by Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise). This also leads to Grace having a larger role in this month’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.

We’ll have more of our conversation with Atwell regarding that film closer to its release on May 23.