My Mom's Basement - EPISODE 133 - 'LOKI' WRITER MICHAEL WALDRON

Episode Date: June 15, 2021

'Loki' creator/writer Michael Waldron joins Robbie and Clem in the Basement to discuss the new series, how it came to be, his relationship with Kevin Feige, what working on Doctor Strange 2 with Sam Raimi is like, and more! 3Chi: Use code MMB at checkout to receive 5% off at 3Chi.com Bearbottom Clothing: Use code BASEMENT at BarebottomClothing.com for FREE SHIPPING Felix Gray: Go to FelixGrayGlasses.com/BASEMENT for FREE SHIPPING Subscribe to My Mom's Basement on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIeZ96PqdsJYQ7DFLRx6MHw My Mom's Basement Merchandise: https://store.barstoolsports.com/collections/my-moms-basement Intro Music: “Basement Noise” by All Time Low Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/album/basement-noise/1499013757?i=1499013968 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/3Aq9W9BBCjsFOQqcYyO6IA?si=d9d0f74cf54a48deYou can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/mymomsbasement

Hey My Mom's Basement listeners, you can find our episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, and Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Just stupid boys making basement noise in the basement, noise in the basement. Just stupid boys making basement noise in the basement. Yeah, yeah. Hello and welcome to My Mom's Basement presented by Barstool Sports and 3Chi. I am your host, Robbie Fox, and today's, I guess, bonus episode is our interview with Michael Waldron. We promised you this episode during our Loki episode one recap, and here it is. I feel like it couldn't have gone better. Michael Waldron was such a cool dude, really down to earth, and just really knew his stuff

about Marvel, Star Wars. We talked about it all. Now, let me tell you about 3Chi, and we'll get right into the interview. 3Chi is the industry leader in Delta-8 THC products. All of these products are formulated by a Bruce Banner-esque biochemist and made in the USA with USA grown hemp. And I'll tell you what, I bet 3C actually works in the TVA. I bet the Infinity Stones in that draw, they don't. We'll talk about those with Waldron. They don't work, but the 3C still does because that is beyond

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Now let's get into this interview with Michael Waldron. All right, welcome back to my mama's basement. This is the interview that I think all of our fans have been anticipating for the entire week. I think everyone's been looking forward to it like crazy. It's Michael Waldron, the writer, creator of Loki, the new show on Disney Plus that we have just been losing our minds over. First and foremost, congratulations on all of the recent success. Thank you for the amazing episode that you gave us last Wednesday of Loki. We're looking forward to the rest of the series.

I want to take it back to the start with Loki and you and sort of how this all came to be. Does Marvel bring you in and lay out, hey, this is the next phase of the MCU that we're looking to do? We're doing WandaVision, Loki, Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Would you like to do any of these? Or did you say, I would love to do a Loki show? Let's talk. No, it was more the full, first off, yeah, nice to meet you guys and glad to be on. It was more the former. It was Marvel had, you know, they had the idea of doing a Loki show about Loki in the world of the TVA. I mean, that was their genius to put him in this kind of time travel adventure facing off against these guys. So that was my jumping off point

that I started pitching from. And yeah, and it's like, you kind of learn, all right, what is, that's part of the exciting part of, or that's part of what's exciting about getting this job in those first couple weeks is like all right just a fan suddenly you're it's it's like you're going to area 51 and you're just being shown aliens and uh being told it's sort of like loki in the tva like you have that experience yeah exactly and it's like and here's a dinosaur like they exist they stood and the earth

is hollow uh and you're learning you're learning all the all the secrets and everything so you can do your own job now when you see all those dinosaurs and aliens when are you going to take that x-men alien and uh fantastic four and so how are you going to introduce them into the mcu and when is it episode three episode four we're going to do the finale penultimate. Can you just give us like kind of a hint here? Actually, they're going to get introduced in the MCU and the star Wars movie. Oh,

that's how can we forget? Yeah. Yeah. That's it's all going to. Yeah. That's the answer. Everybody foolish of us not to put that together. Yes.

Come on. So what was it about this show that like made you really want to dig into it was it loki the character was it the actual like tva thing and also this had to be years before endgame came out or at least a while before endgame came out right so you had to know that he survives it as a fan you have to just be like oh my god i had intel about endgame yeah i was it was it was like i guess right toward the end of the year 2018 like november 2018 when i started having meetings it got kind of real and pitching on it and part of that was i had i was like all right guys i got how how is loki alive what do we Loki alive? What are we working with?

And so they called me to tell me, and I just so happened to be in a parking garage, which was so perfect because I'm like in my car, in a parking garage being told what happens in Endgame because it was like, all right, so Endgame is about the Avengers pull off a time heist to steal the the infinity sense back and i'm like even saying it to you now i'm like uh and it was such a surreal conversation and moment um but but really really cool to get to have that and then you know you know, you, so, so, so I knew what was

happening with Loki and we pitched on it and, or I pitched on it, got the job. And then our writer's room started in like, I don't know, February or March of 2019. In the second week of our writer's room, we actually got to go see an early screening of Endgame there in the Marvel offices. And that was really cool because it was mostly finished. There was some like previs still in the final battle, but like, I think for all of us, that was like, holy shit, we are seeing the biggest movie ever two months early. That's insane.

I have to ask this question because I've been bouncing this idea off Bob forever. And now that you've kind of gone in and again, this area 51 in my head, my dumb brain is going to keep thinking of that. Is there like a giant whiteboard that basically takes up like 20 classrooms and it's basically phase the next like 10 phases of Marvel written out by Kevin Flay? Because I feel like there's always a plan here and they, if they have to kind of, you know, you know, move something around, they can, but it just feels like all this stuff is just, it's just a huge puzzle. They always have in place, but they can also, you know, switch it out.

Just tell me that there is, or is it once and for all, so I can let my brain stop. I mean, there is definitely, there's definitely a plan in place that is, that is very smart and the place is populated by, by geniuses who are the keepers of all, all of this thing. I think part of that genius is knowing better than to put it on a giant visual board. But, but yeah, that's, you know, there's, there's a plan. And, but, but, and I've said this in a million interviews that I think the key to all these projects is just like, make the thing

you're working on great. And that's, that's ultimately, that is what pushes the MCU forward more than they're going to connect and you're going to stay invested and, you know, the ride will continue. Speaking of Kevin Feige, just as two Marvel absolute fanboys, maniacs who worship the ground that this man walks on. What is he like? Like, how quickly do you meet him him do you have to give your pitch to him is that intimidating obviously you guys have gotten along right because you're continuing to work together on doctor strange on star wars so what's the man in the hat like kevin's great man he he is he is truly such a cool just regular dude uh who just happens to be brilliant um i mean that's i think my pitch was in the like a room with basically the the boardroom table from network that that ned be is like yells voice of god yells at you from but no i think that was the first time I met Kevin and uh no he's he's just

he's a great collaborator um a great listener and very good at just like all right empowering everybody else's ideas probably like any other producer but um or any other great producer but his own ideas like he'll pitch something you know be like oh wow like if you wanted to you could probably be a just be the best screenwriter alive couldn't you like like sometimes that's the feeling talking to him about story and stuff so yeah he's he's the real deal uh that's for sure it sounds like he's kind of a big leader of you know a bunch of different people who are all awesome what they do right you guys are kind of competing with each other to like hey i always think of civil war civil war just kind of put the

mcu on this different path and then i feel like it kind of made everyone work a little harder now say kevin seems like a great guy but say you were to find out that like he knew that his best friend had assassinated your parents along the way and he kept that to himself. Is that something you'd be a little upset about that, you know, someone who's supposedly such a good guy could keep such a horrid secret? Yeah, I would try. All right. I'm trying to track that. Am I Tony or am I Cap in this scenario? You're Tony. Clem is Tony and I i'm cap and this is an argument that we've had for about five years running now yeah i mean i'm i'm like i'm like man

uh i get it i know he was your pal but you know he killed you i i wasn't him so it would have been hard to explain a lot of i i a lot of bad shit happens just because uh cap feels bad that that bucky was brainwashed i'll say i'll say i'll say that i feel bad for bucky. I love Bucky. Cap is a great friend. That is for sure. Ride or die. That's true. Fair enough. Before we move on from talking about Kevin Feige himself, I do want to just touch on, I know you probably can't tell us anything about the Star Wars movie you're working on with him, but what was it that you guys connected over, clicked over when it came to Star Wars that made him go, Hey, Michael Waldron, step up to the star Wars universe with me. I mean, I, I think that we've, we've just, we've had two successful collaborations now on,

on Loki and Dr. Strange is both been a pleasure and, and we're both star Wars fans, you know, where, I mean, really we love, we truly love that, that universe. And I, and I don't, I don't know that it's, that it's much more complex than that. It's just, we've got a lot of reverence for that world, you know, and we both love to tell a story in it. So I think that's why that worked. Are you writing that script right now? Right now? Yeah, you can't see my hands on the other side of his laptop he's got the whiteboard with the timeline on it exactly i mean i minimize this screen it's all it's all right there um yeah i don't know all

right so a question that i have about loki episode one which i've watched four times now i understand i tweeted i understand that's probably time that could be better spent doing something else now that I've seen it over and over again, but it's so damn good. I just keep going back. So there's the scene where Casey has the desk full of infinity stones. When you write a scene like that, where you actually bring the stones in and you talk about them in the way that you do where, okay. And the TVA, the magic really doesn't work here. And it gives Loki the way that you do where okay in the tva the magic really

doesn't work here and it gives loki the realization that i'm in this really special place the place is not an illusion do you have to run that up the ladder when you bring the stones in and be like hey can i use the infinity stones or are you given the freedom in marvel to be like do whatever you want i do like the idea of kevin watching that and being like oh shit wait what you had stones no you said eggs you said they were that yes yes that one you got to run up the flagpole uh to to use the in the to use the infinity sense but we we had a producer uh in in the room with us at all times helping us really i mean functioning as a as another writer this guy kevin right you know was as much a part of shaping the creative as anybody um and so

the executives there like like you guys were saying, they're all so – they all do such a good job under Kevin, and they have a direct line to everybody above them. So when we're like, hey, we want to show Infinity Stones in this episode because we think it would be impactful, you can get a quick answer on if that's okay or not. And I think in that case, it's really thrilling. And what better way to signal we're in a new era of things for Marvel. The Infinity Stone, the Infinity Saga, that was the past, this is the future. We were talking about this last week

when we recapped the episode, and I compared it to the beginning of infinity war where thanos crushes the tesseract in his bare hand and reduces it to the the stone and it's like oh my god the entire build-up of the first phase was all over the tesseract was all over avengers and you get to that and it's like well yeah that's the past that doesn't that's not really it doesn't apply anymore now we got some questions where people were like they're being used as paperweights it's the infinity stones for christ's sake like what did you make of the fans i'm sure you saw some people being like we're all all 23 films for nothing now i mean i you know i think that's exactly how Loki felt in that moment in a way. So I, and to some extent that that's exactly how we want people to feel, at least feel that sort of like, you know, unmoored and like, wait,

what the hell? Like questioning what does everything mean and all that and you know i i i think that's all i should say on it for for now tom hiddleston's performance when he realizes that is tremendous just absolutely awesome yeah he's i mean that's the thing tom's tom's so great um and uh we i knew i i've talked about, but yeah, day one of the writer's room, we, I was like, we put up on the wall, a picture of Buzz Lightyear with his arm popped off because we were like, that's, that's the emotional climax of episode one. We knew that on the very first day of the writer's room that him seeing how his life was supposed to play out, seeing that that was his glorious purpose

was going to be really cool wow i was going to ask if you had any uh inspirations or if you pulled any inspirations that we wouldn't expect and toy story is a great one yeah that was yeah day day one toy story loki is buzz you you are a toy and i i saw in another interview you had done that you said miss minute drew the inspiration from mr dna from jurassic park which i mean that's one of my all-time bit characters i i know dna i'm saying it all the time there so to have miss minute just every time i hear that voice and you know see her on screen it's just gonna warm my heart with i feel like there's a lot of kind of kind of will will be a lot of little nostalgic bits throughout the series that you probably draw from. So, I mean, Toy Story and Jurassic Park,

you're batting 1000 in my house right now, just so you know. Yeah. Well, yeah, those are, those are all the things. Yeah. All the things I love. So I, that's, that's the stuff that I was just, yeah. Mr. DNA, dino DNA. You know, last week we were talking about Loki. We were talking about his wardrobe and how it really just did not look comfortable. Not the Asgardian leather robes and not the jumpsuit that the TVA put him in. Bare bottom clothing does things differently though. Founded on the principle that comfortable, made to last menswear shouldn't cost you an arm and a leg.

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felixgrayglasses.com slash basement for the best blue light glasses on the market. That's Felix gray, F E L I X G R A Y glasses.com slash basement, free shipping, free returns, free exchanges, Felix gray glasses.com slash basement. Let's get back to the interview. We took some fan questions from the last episode and we got one from Kevin Kelly where he, this is an important one. And I think it's one that has been on the mind of a lot of fans is Casey Mephisto. And now I want to parlay this into also like when you have that scene in the church in episode one where the little girl points to the mosaic of the devil on the wall, you knowing that you wrote that scene in and you filmed it when WandaVision comes out and everyone's talking about Mephisto.

Are you in the back of your mind like, oh, fuck, devil scene no way no way man i'm pumped i'm pumped i you're like all right we're gonna like muddy the waters for everyone now yeah yeah i mean mephisto's a mean at this point like uh i i like how do you how do you i whenever if and when mephisto does show up the true the real trick will be how does it not feel like the juggernaut doing i'm the juggernaut bitch in x-men the last stand like that that will be because it's it's transcended at this point um no i think that's cool i i was i i really i love the speculation I think that's part of the fun of this. You have to embrace it.

You're not, you're not going to, you're not going to always make people happy with that. You also have to understand we're making stuff to be consumed by wide audiences. You know, that's part of it. People are always going to like everything. That's okay. Is Casey Mephisto? Time will tell. I mean, Casey, Casey is based on, there's a character in one of the early runs of the TVA or of the TVA and the comics, who's just a green alien. It was like a train conductor.

You can find him on Google, I think think but that's who casey's based on um and yeah casey's a fan favorite i love it oh my god i loved casey he had my favorite line of the whole episode when loki threatens to gut him like a fish and he his delivery of just what's a fish was so funny to me he's great so even though you said you know this is what it's all about is to kind of you know watch this show and have fun with it can you just please tell me so i get it from your mouth just say clem do not go on reddit and ruin the show like you have ruined so many other shows whether it's wandavision true detective and i get down and i'm i'm reading and the every everyone creates this

show that is impossible for it to you know be made in six episodes let alone 600 um can you just just yell at me basically and tell me don't go on reddit don't spend like the four days following the episode making up a show that doesn't exist and magneto again you know professor x are all just going to show up in episode in the in episode five or something like well hopefully that you don't have tom hiddleston like teasing a huge cameo and it being himself that would be right yeah yeah especially in a show about variants that would yeah exactly uh i can't yell at you for that man i i love that shit i mean that's like how do you think i became a writer it's like i remember just like being in college when lost when Lost was coming out. Like, just, you know, in my mind racing on where is this going? Did Lost maybe turn out the way I hoped it would?

Probably not, but I loved the process of, like, dreaming about where it would go. I think, and I just said this to the Lights Camera Pod guys, and I think that the only time that that stuff is detrimental to the to the viewing experience is when just the idea of like seeing someone like like like just seeing a character I the example I just used was santa claus but like oh i saw santa like that's that that suddenly is more important than the actual emotional story like of the characters in the show that you're you know just don't get so excited to to see a rare pokemon uh that you don't enjoy uh catching them all is that a good metaphor

i think maybe the mandalorians spoiled us with luke skywalker right luke skywalker came back i mean luke sky it's like that was arguably the biggest cameo that can and ever will exist on television yeah i don't like it that was the build-up of young luke skywalker being a fully powered jedi in his prime kicking ass nobody's nobody's gonna live up to that nor you know because there's no nobody's we don't have the investment of 50 years of star wars love or whatever like uh so i don't know if there's, so I don't know if there's any, yeah, I don't know if there's, I don't know, maybe Luke's in our show. Don't say that. Don't say that.

We're teasing the episode with that. And everyone's going to have to listen to the pod. Like this is how you work in the game. Listen, he said that he's going to bring in the X-Men and the star Wars. He's given us all the headlines, all the juicy headlines. Thank you so much, Michael. to bring in the x-men in a star wars movie too i mean he's giving us all the headlines all the juicy headlines for michael walton it kind of goes back to like even the this phase in general all you know the the three shows that have started it and now that black widow's been pushed back and the movie's going to come out afterwards even that's a flashback you guys these three shows

it's basically like a baseball game where it's like the last game that we saw in the theaters was a walk-off grand slam in the ninth inning was endgame right and it absolutely crushed and i guess you know spider-man as well afterwards and now you guys it's like all right game one of the next season and it's like there's no way you got there's there's just not enough invested in all these different characters we're kind of like it's the fallout from endgame we're kind of coming off of here and just to kind of see it all just uh build up it's like everyone just you know settled down a little I think as a as a parent I've noticed this too we should have enjoyed the way Quicksilver

came onto the screen and be like oh that was a cool little nod to the fans but it's like what does it mean we're talking multiverses I know we ruined it for ourselves we ruined it for ourselves in in that sense and as someone like again as a parent I take the kids out for a nice you know surprise to ice cream and then it's like all right now what's the next surprise are we going to Disneyland it's like Disneyland where did Disneyland come what's the next surprise? Are we going to Disneyland? It's like, Disneyland? Where did Disneyland come on the table, right? And that's kind of happened, I think, with WandaVision,

which was a great show in its own right. It's just the old- And actually, I feel like looking back in hindsight, a few months removed from WandaVision, everyone that was disappointed by the finale or that said they were, feels maybe differently about it now. And they're like, you know what? I think we were a little too harsh on it.

Like, that's how I felt at least. Yeah. I mean, look, the fact is everybody knew what it was and everybody was talking about it and it, and it like captured, it captured the, the conversation, the kind of the cultural conversation in a way that, that I would argue, probably maybe Mandalorian didn't even on a week to week basis, just by nature of Mandalorian is a little bit more procedural and it's, and it's episode, it stands alone a little bit more. Yeah.

There wasn't the, what is going to happen next week? Like we have to find out it's like, well, Mandalorian probably go to a different planet and do a job for someone in exchange for something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is, we love it for that. It's a serial, but like we, we know what to expect going into it is dr strange too going to be sick yeah yeah it's going to be so sick yes hell yeah uh yeah man it's it's it's awesome i was over in london uh helping make that for most of the first part of this year. You know, the cast is amazing.

Benedict, Lizzie Olsen, everybody. Yeah, keep naming names. Keep naming names. Who's the guy who played Mephisto again in that? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Tom Cruise. No, it's, yes, Sam's amazing, and I think he's done something really special with this movie.

The return of Sam Raimi to the superhero genre is like worth the price of admission alone. Spider-Man 2 is one of my all-time favorite movies. Like that was one of the movies that really captured my imagination when I was little. My brother taking me to that was like a euphoric experience. That was like me going to the TVA. Oftentimes throughout shooting, I'd just let Sam say something. I'd look at Sam and I'd say, oh boy, yeah. And he'd just look at me.

I was just quoting that Mary Jane line to Peter all the time. I love as a New Yorker quoting though, like, if you want to get to him, you got to go through us. There you go. Well, I think if you love Spider get to him you got to go through us very good well i i i think if you love spider-man too i think you'll you'll dig dr strange too um yeah it's gonna be good i can't wait michael thank you so much for the time it's been a pleasure getting to talk to you and thank you for creating a show that we're getting a hell of a lot of entertainment and enjoyment out of and

speculation week to week. Like you said, the week to week aspect really is the way to go for these shows. I think. Yeah, this is, this is the fun. Enjoy yourselves. Go crazy doing it. That that's, I think that's why we write it. And we'll, uh, we'll get together again and talk about heels. We didn't even talk about wrestling. Yes.

That's a real shame. Absolutely. See y'all. Thanks a lot, Michael.