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James Mottram

Like any normal human being, Anthony Mackie was a little nervous when he came up against his co-star Harrison Ford in the latest Marvel spectacular, Captain America: Brave New World.
“I couldn’t remember my lines,” the actor admits. “I went on to set, and I tried to say my lines, and I just couldn’t. No matter what I tried to say, I’d be like ‘Hamburger!’ I couldn’t say my lines. I was just thrown off!”
The jovial Mackie, 46, may boast over two decades’ film experience – right back to co-starring with rap superstar Eminem in 2002’s 8 Mile – but such nerves are forgivable. Ford is a bona fide Hollywood icon, his roles including adventurer Indiana Jones and Star Wars’ very own space pirate Han Solo.
“I’m in a scene with Harrison Ford!” Mackie exclaims. “That’s crazy when [it’s] somebody you admire, and now you’re working with them. So it took me a day to get over that. Once I got over that, it was smooth sailing.”


Even more daunting, perhaps, Mackie is about to take on the biggest mantle of his career: Captain America.
His character Sam Wilson – also known as winged hero The Falcon – has appeared in various Marvel Cinematic Universe films right back to 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
He has even fronted his own Disney + TV show, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, smoothing over the transition after the original Captain America – Steve Rogers – handed over the Stars-and-Stripes shield that is Cap’s signature weapon.
But this is the first time Mackie’s Wilson has fronted a major Marvel movie.

“Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson are very different,” he says, “but one and the same as far as human characteristics … it’s the humanity and the dignity of the character that people gravitate to and love because they’re the best representations of ourselves. So it’s not so much that the character changed, just the uniform changed.”
In Captain America: Brave New World, Mackie comes up against Ford, who plays Thaddeus Ross – now elected President of the United States.
With Ford taking over the role previously played by William Hurt, who died in 2022, the big reveal has already been widely trailed in advance publicity: with the 82 year-old Ford using motion capture techniques, the Hulk-hunting Ross will turn into the angry-looking antagonist Red Hulk.
As it happens, Mackie worked with Ford right at the outset of his career in 2003’s Hollywood Homicide. The buddy cop comedy may not be the most memorable Ford film ever, but it was the perfect school for Mackie to learn in.

Since then, he has worked with everyone from Clint Eastwood (on Million Dollar Baby) to Kathryn Bigelow (on The Hurt Locker and Detroit). But reuniting with Ford on Brave New World proved an interesting career marker.
Ford taught him how to be a leading man on set, he says. “We were more equals, and I would say, colleagues. It’s not like he had been in the business 50 years, and I’ve been in the business 20 years, and he was teaching me [something like] ‘Listen, kid, you need to work harder.’
“No, it wasn’t like that at all. We’ve both been in the business for over 20 years. So there’s a certain amount of pedigree and experience that comes with that. So it was more man-to-man, as opposed to adult-to-kid.”
Indeed, Mackie is now riding high in an industry where he has been a working actor for so long. This year not only sees him play out his Captain America fantasies, but he will return in the second season of Twisted Metal, the video-game-to-television adaptation that he fronts as lead character John Doe.

He is also voicing an automated character in Netflix sci-fi The Electric State, alongside Chris Pratt (“I play a robot who is Pratt’s sidekick helper and I … help him!” he says, coyly) and leading the charge in historical Saudi drama Desert Warrior.
While playing Captain America will see him segue into Marvel’s forthcoming Avengers films (2026’s Doomsday and 2027’s Secret Wars), the role offers other leverage.
“That’s why I think being Captain America is so important,” he says. “Not because I get invited to parties – because I live in New Orleans, I go to a party every day!
“Doing Captain America and doing those Marvel movies gives you the opportunity to do those stories that should be told because it’s not a US$200 million movie, it’s a US$5 million movie. That’s the importance of those movies to me.”

The son of a carpenter who owned his own roofing business, Mackie is a confessed “theatre kid”.
“The film thing … I kind of happened into that. I didn’t go into acting to do movies. I went into acting because I love theatre and storytelling,” he says.
Drama drove him; he studied the discipline at North Carolina School of the Arts and later the prestigious Julliard in New York. By 2002 – the same year he co-starred with Eminem – he was winning an Obie award, which honours off-Broadway and off-off Broadway theatre, for his role in Carl Hancock Rux’s play Talk.
Ever since, Mackie’s rise has been steady-as-she-goes, as he darted between television shows like Altered Carbon and Black Mirror and films as diverse as WikiLeaks tale The Fifth Estate and fantasy horror Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.
“Fame is a very weird thing for me,” he notes. “It’s not a natural emotion. It’s not happy, sad, famous, you know? Fame isn’t the reason I started doing what I did … so it’s been a slippery slope. And one that I’m not sure if I navigated the best way … it’s difficult.”

Does he feel playing Captain America will change things for him? “No, no, because I’ve been in that position in my career before, and I know what that feels like.
“Remember, I’m the only person who was the lead of two Spike Lee movies [television film Sucker Free City and She Hate Me, both 2004] nobody saw. When you’re 24 years old and you’re the lead of a Spike Lee movie, everybody’s like, ‘Yo! You’re in the stratosphere. Now nobody can touch you.’”
Needless to say, that was not the case. Now Mackie just wants his four kids to think Captain America: Brave New World is cool. All other expectations are on hold.
“Captain America is not going to take anything away from 8 Mile. It’s not going to take anything away from Hurt Locker. It’s not going to take anything away from Sucker Free City. Not going to take anything away from any of the projects I’ve done.

“It’s not going to prove to anybody that I can act. It’s not going to prove to anybody that I’m a bankable name.”
As Mackie puts it, he is a hundred projects down in his increasingly impressive career. “What else do I have to prove?”
Want more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook


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Anthony Mackie as Captain America/Sam Wilson in a still from Captain America: Brave New World. Photo: Marvel Studios

Anthony Mackie promotes Captain America: A Brave New World in London in January 2025. He plays the lead in the Marvel film opposite Harrison Ford. Photo: Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP

Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson/Captain America in a still from Captain America: Brave New World. Photo: Eli Adé/Marvel

Anthony Mackie (centre) as Captain America/Sam Wilson and Harrison Ford (right) as US President Thaddeus Ross in a still from Captain America: Brave New World. Photo: Marvel Studios

Cast members Danny Ramirez, Harrison Ford and Anthony Mackie attend a photo call for the film Captain America: Brave New World at Trafalgar Square in London in January 2025. Photo: Reuters

Harrison Ford as US President Thaddeus Ross and Anthony Mackie as Captain America/Sam Wilson in a still from Captain America: Brave New World. Photo: Eli Adé/Marvel

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Mackie does not have big expectations of his new Marvel outing, co-starring Harrison Ford – he just wants his children to think it is cool


Mackie does not have big expectations of his new Marvel outing, co-starring Harrison Ford – he just wants his children to think it is cool.


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