Anthony Mackie will soon join the growing pantheon of actors who have played superheroes. The actor, best known for his roles in The Hurt Locker and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter will appear as Falcon in the upcoming Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The person most excited for Mackie to portray Marvel’s first black superhero? His brother.
“When I got the part, I called my brother, and I told him, ‘Guess what I’m doing,’” Mackie recalled in an interview with Vulture. “And I told him the movie and who I was playing, and he literally just gave me a litany of history about this character. He went in his closet, and he dug out a copy of the very first Captain America with the Falcon in it. So I said to him, ‘Holy shit, you’re an Uber-nerd!’”
The first order of business is for Mackie to get into shape physically. “He’s known for his physique,” Mackie said. “He’s described as 6’3”, 245 pounds, so starting Monday, for the next five months until we start shooting, I’m going back to high-school workouts and start doing two-a-days, so I get up to 230 pounds. I’m going to try not to get a job between now and then, so I can really focus on this. Because Chris Evans is in such good shape! I’m just a dude he dragged into the lab that he injected with some shit, but I got to stand next to him. So we shall see!”
But despite the hard work ahead of him, Mackie is more than ready to take on the character. “I feel like every kid deserves a hero, you know?,” he said. “And now that Spider-Man is Latino, I’m happy that little black kids are going to have the opportunity to say, ‘Hey, I want to be the Falcon.’ You know? So it’s cool.”
Captain America: The Winter Soldier is set to be released sometime in 2014.
