29 “Hawkeye” Behind-The-Scenes Facts Straight From Directors Bert And Bertie

There are obviously massive spoilers ahead for Hawkeye!

“We went in for a general meeting and we were like, ‘So, Trinh Tran [who is an executive producer], what are you working on at the moment?’ And she said, ‘Oh, it’s Hawkeye. It’s a show that introduces Kate Bishop,'” Bertie recalled. “We were sold from that moment. They were already getting to the end of pitches, but we just wanted to be involved in that pitch process. So, we didn’t have much time, but we didn’t care. So we rallied together our thoughts and ideas, and we pitched our little hearts out, and got the call that they liked it.”

Bert said, “We had an awareness of Kate Bishop, but not specifically the Matt Fraction comics that the show focused on. So, we dove into that and we loved the relationship between Kate and Clint. It was so unusual. That’s when we knew we had to do it.”

She continued, saying, “I think the show has got this really unique banter between them that not even the comics had. There was an almost more chill Kate Bishop in the comics, whereas this Kate Bishop is such a fangirl and goofy, and getting it wrong but being badass at the same time. She’s so endearing from the get go. We were inspired visually and tonally by the Fraction comics, but Hailee and Jeremy just had their own unique thing.”

“Obviously, it was like, how long can we delay the reveal of Yelena?” Bert recalled. “That was very important to us. You know this is a Widow, but the big reveal that it’s Yelena is so satisfying. We loved having such an amazing woman kick Jeremy’s — I mean, Clint’s — ass. So that was really fun because they are each dangerous in their own way. Yelena and Maya match his ability, so it was fun to see that four way fight.”

Bert said, “Doing it in such a simple dialogue-free way was perfect, it’s all done with just a look. When she looks at Kate Bishop, she’s challenging her not to do what she’s about to do. Then, jumping off a building and disappearing down the street. I think we should all leave rooms as cool as Yelena.”

“We did a rehearsal, but every single thing was just perfect between them, and the improvisation that they brought to it was dynamite. We could just sit back at the monitors and just enjoy every single take and their chemistry,” Bertie said. “It was a really fun day.”

“There was obviously a script and it was planned, and we knew we wanted Kate to kind of turn and throw something at Yelena. At first, we were just looking around the set and there was one of those lucky cats from Chinatown. So, it was going to be that at one point, but then there was this hot sauce bottle, and we loved that,” Bertie said. “Then, Florence was like, ‘Oh, well, this hot sauce now needs to go all over the mac and cheese.’ Florence is hugely into hot sauce, but Hailee not so much. So, the whole thing where Yelena basically says, ‘Are you done? Can I go crazy?’ That was not planned.”

Bertie continued, saying, “As an actor, you have to know you’re up for many takes, and we kept wondering how much hot sauce could Florence take? She went there for real. At one point, we were like, ‘Are you sure you’re good?’ And Florence was like, ‘I’m in. I am in it. Don’t you worry.'”

“When they were rehearsing, Florence was like, ‘I’ll need to get some implements. So, we’ll go over here.’ She picked it up and just went, ‘There’s one fork! There’s only one fork!’ So, that’s where that dialogue came from,” Bertie explained. “The props people were searching around for other forks, but they only had plastic ones, so it became the one proper cutlery fork and one plastic fork. It was perfect and it all went into the script and we came out with this hilarious Yelena and Kate scene. Florence and Hailee are just so relaxed with each other that Hailee could come out with the, ‘I’m one person,’ line as response to Florence running with the cutlery joke. It was funny, but also very Kate.”

Bertie said, “What’s amazing about that scene is it’s really long, but it has everything. It has this comedy, it has this underlying tension the whole time, and then really real, deep emotion. Just to have a scene that takes you through all of those emotions was so special.” And Bert explained that having such great actors makes these types of scenes work perfectly and you can see it with the mac and cheese scene, Clint and Kate in the diner, and Kate and Eleanor talking in her room.

“Florence suggested the fur coat for Yelena,” Bertie revealed. “She was like, ‘I’m gonna wear a fur coat. This is just what Yelena is gonna wear.’ Suddenly Yelena’s incognito outfit became a fur coat with an ‘I love New York’ shirt. It worked though because Yelena just needs to turn her head a little bit to not be seen. It’s all that Widow training, they’ve got some Jedi mind tricks going on.”

Bertie continued, saying, “Originally, we wanted the fur coat outfit for the mac and cheese scene, and, these are Florence’s words, she was like, ‘No, I want to look like an f-ing pirate when I walk into that apartment.’ So she had that long coat on instead.”

Bert explained, “The thing about Vincent is he and his doubles would arrive under cloaks because no one could see them. We were filming some things in public places and we had to get them to set. We realized the scale of how important it was to keep it a secret, so we would smuggle them in under black cloaks. Vincent and his doubles too because once you see his double, you would know it’s Kingpin. It was really fun to see how we keep the secrecy in this Marvel world.”

“It was always going to be big, and there were a few iterations of how the Kingpin reveal was going to happen,” Bertie said. “So, it was a real pleasure to be part of that.”

“We wanted to film it in a way that felt continuous so that you were there and experiencing it with Yelena,” Bert said. “For us, we always knew that was going to be incredibly exciting for fans, but we wanted to do it in a way that we hadn’t seen it done before. So hopefully, like when we put people in the car during the Episode 3 car chase, this feels the same way. We wanted audiences to experience the Blip on a real human level.”

Bertie said, “We actually had to build that bathroom set in this incredible mansion because we needed to come straight out of that living room into the bathroom, which didn’t actually exist there, and then straight back out again to reveal how the living room and world changed.” Meanwhile, Bert said they actually made big changes in the mansion following the Blip. She explained, “We actually redecorated the bathroom for real. The transition to get from one moment to the other was done in post-production, but the green walls are real and everything that changed was real in the bathroom and the living room changes too. We always say it’s a grounded story, so that keeps it human as well. It’s tactile, it actually exists.”

“The last thing that we filmed on that day one in the beautiful house was Yelena entering that bathroom and turning the tap on, and the camera kind of tilts down,” Bertie began. “Then, we had to go away and just remember what we’ve done. The camera operator had to implant that moment in his brain. Then we came back the next day and he did the end of the Blip camera move. It was very technical to figure out where the camera operator was going to be so Florence could then get out of the bathroom. It was lots of fun and we love that stuff. We love figuring out the technicals. You come up with the pie-in-the-sky idea and then it’s getting down and dirty to figure how to do it best.”

“Emotionally, it was there on the page,” Bert began. “It really helps the audience connect where we’ve been in the universe when you get these moments of reflection from Yelena and Clint. As a fan, you want to see that stuff again. It stitches the world together. So, it just expanded the world as we know it, but narratively, it was on the page, the emotion was on the page, and then you decide where to include it in post.”

Bertie said, “We just looked back at that Endgame scene. We looked at how this rooftop in New York was kind of like that epic cliff on Vormir. In terms of the shots, we could replicate the shots that are done. You have a wide shot from the side that shows Kate hanging there, you have the shot looking up at Clint, even with his hand over the edge, like in Endgame. You also have this close-up on Kate, just like Natasha. The only difference is Kate is not saying ‘It’s okay,’ she’s saying, ‘Pull me up.’ There’s the slow motion of it all too and we did everything that we could do to echo the Clint and Natasha moment. And, of course, the music was there to add an extra kick of emotion for MCU fans around the world.”

Bertie explained, “Aside from the Yelena reveal, probably the most important reason for that fight, on a story level, was to have Kate go off the roof and remind Clint of the fragility of life and remind him of Natasha, the other partner he had in his career, and how he was scared to let someone else in and go there. That was the big moment that Kevin [Feige] and Trinh [Tran] were pushing for.”

“Her character grew beyond what she’s been able to do before, in terms of what they gave Laura. So, hats off to Marvel for recognizing Linda’s talent and recognizing that a woman doesn’t just have to be at home with the kids. She’s got more to contribute than that,” Bert said. “Marvel worked with Linda and the team to give Laura Barton more. It made us very happy to be part of that and it opened her character to be more important to not only Clint Barton, but also the Marvel Cinematic Universe.”

“The Fraction comics felt like they were harking back to something from the ’70s and ’80s. So we looked at those kinds of car chases from those periods and used those as inspiration, hence the type of car that we chose,” Bert said. “Not only as a story point — we aren’t gonna beat up that old, beautiful Dodger — but also the Chrysler New Yorker is a very wide car so it gives you more of a panorama. It’s a boat of a car. That brought an interesting aesthetic to the car chase, which made it feel different too.”

“The minute you have a car chase at the heart of the story you’re telling, we needed the camera inside of the car and figuring out how to make it interesting and experience it with them,” Bert explained. “That was the essence of the beginning of the car chase. Then, the minute Kate goes out the window, of course, we should go out the window with her because it’s to experience being this incredible archer.”

“I remember, we were over filming by the shelving units one day. We were moving our way around the toy store filming and suddenly we heard this crash. Everyone stopped and looked, and the next thing Jeremy Renner popped out of the ball pit with this big grin on his face, like a six year old, and then he dove back in again,” Bert recalled. “We had to go and talk about that and find a way to include it for Clint.”

She explained, “For absolute director geekiness, it has to be a oner in the car chase in Episode 3. But, for humor and intimacy and badass women, it’s the Yelena and Kate mac and cheese scene.”

“There was originally a whole dialogue scene planned. We were losing light and we didn’t have enough time to film the dialogue properly,” she recalled. The light was dying, we had New York, we had the sunset, and we just told them to walk away from camera. As they were doing it, we remembered that frame from the Fraction comic where they are both holding the arrow. So, we ran up and I was trying to get this arrow out of Kate’s pack and Hailee was like, ‘What are you doing?’ and Jeremy was like, ‘Just go with it.’ They did it and that ended up being one of my favorite little moments.”

“It’s so dark on so many levels, but I think true fans who have been there since then just understand it. It’s one of the darkest moments, but also one of the funniest,” she said.

Bertie explained, “We had had a day or two of filming and we’d been filming some of Episode 3 and the more conversational banter stuff. Then, Jeremy had to put himself all the way to the end of this journey and the end of that emotional decision to revisit Ronin. It’s a very touching goodbye and it’s amazing to watch an actor of Jeremy’s caliber be able to switch up his tone and absolutely go there.”

“It’s exciting to hear fans clamoring for a Season 2,” Bertie said. “We can’t say anything. I think that’s when you know you’re doing something right and that people are really satisfied. They’ve been around for this rollercoaster and they want more. More Kate, more Yelena, more everything. It’s the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so these stories continue, right?”