We were invited to the Hollywood press conference for Avengers: Infinity War. By far, this is the largest press conference we have ever covered in terms of how many cast and filmmakers participated. Hosted amusingly by Jeff Goldblum who starred as the Grandmaster in Thor: Ragnarok, the cast and filmmakers included directors Joe Russo and Anthony Russo; producer Kevin Feige; Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man), Chris Pratt (Star-Lord); Chris Hemsworth (Thor) and many more – a total of about 25 cast and crew (I will list them all at the bottom of the article). This is probably one of the most fun press conferences we’ve been able to cover. Here is our full video, and the article below it.
Jeff Goldblum gave an intro before saying, “What the heck is behind our curtain”?, making way for a dropping curtain with three rows of chairs that included all of Avengers: Infinity War participants. It gave new meaning to “Avengers Assemble!
Goldblum’s question topics or characters came out of a hopper, a game show device that I don’t think is used much anymore. For example, he randomly selected a ball that said that a question could be asked of “someone who wears a cape”. The question from the journalist in the audience ended up being for Chris Hemsworth (Thor), about what was the most challenging scene and why – even joking whether it’s because of the people in it or the directors. Hemsworth took to the microphone and quipped to laughter, “It’s all very difficult because of the directors and the people in it…this whole film, it was an awful experience. Myself, Jeff and Tom are going back to our own movies from now on”. He then answered seriously (and actually, it was what I expected after seeing the film), “…Thor meeting the Guardians (of the Galaxy), it felt like the first day of school for me. They all knew each other, and I didn’t, so I was the new kid. And they’d all been shooting and I hadn’t. I had some weird sort of nervous butterflies floating around in my body”. To laughter, he continued, “But I squeezed them out of me, Chris Pratt gave me a big hug…”. He also said it was fun, having a new group of people to interact with.
Tom Holland (Spider-Man) answered a question about his suit in the film, and how did he feel walking around in it. It turns out, the suit wasn’t real. “I didn’t actually get to wear the Iron Spider suit, because it’s too amazing to exist in real life. So I joined the wonderful Mark Ruffalo (the Hulk) in the man canceling costume, and stood amongst these gods wearing pajamas”. There was a lot of laughter, and he continued, “It wasn’t quite as heroic as I liked, and I haven’t seen the film yet…I’m excited to see it”.
Chris Pratt looked surprised at one question, after being asked how it felt for Star-Lord/Peter Quill to be seeing earthlings for the first time in almost 30 years. Pratt had no microphone in his hand at first as he pondered it, quickly amassing three microphones to answer the question. He answered, “That’s a good question. It borders on…it might be best for you to see it, so I’m going to talk about bass fishing, okay?” The room lit up with laughter as he said, “April is a good month for large mouth bass”. And he continued with an explanation of bass fishing before finishing with, “thank you”. The scenes with Chris Pratt and Chris Hemsworth along with other Guardians of the Galaxy characters are really my favorites of the film, both are talented in comedy and it’s easy to see that at the press conference too.
There is so much more from the press conference, it is nearly an hour long! I always find it fun to see the interaction with the different characters, especially at the Avengers press conferences since so many of the actors have worked together for years now and are really comfortable with each other.
The full cast and crew here are: Directors Joe Russo and Anthony Russo join producer Kevin Feige and nearly a full cast of the Avengers: Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Chadwick Boseman (Black Panther), Chris Pratt (Star-Lord), Mark Ruffalo (Hulk), Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man), Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow), Dave Bautista (Drax), Tom Hiddleston (Loki), Benedict Cumberbatch (Doctor Strange), Elizabeth Olsen (Scarlet Witch), Don Cheadle (War Machine), Zoe Saldana (Gamora), Letitia Wright (Shuri), Paul Bettany (Vision), Pom Klementieff (Mantis), Josh Brolin (Thanos), Tom Holland (Spider-Man), Danai Gurira (Okoye), Anthony Mackie (Falcon), Winston Duke (M’Baku), Sebastian Stan (Bucky Barnes).
