- Hayley Atwell spoke about briefly reprising her role as Peggy Carter for "Doctor Strange 2."
- Atwell told Josh Horowitz that her cameo in an alternate universe was "a frustrating moment."
Marvel star Hayley Atwell opened up about feeling dissatisfied by her character Peggy Carter's return in "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness."
"It felt like a frustrating moment in 'Strange,'" Atwell said on the latest episode of Josh Horowitz's podcast, "Happy Sad Confused."
Atwell made her first appearance as Peggy in the 2011 movie "Captain America: The First Avenger," starring Chris Evans as Steve Rogers/Captain America. She returned as a much older version of the character in "Captain America: The Winter Soldier," which was set decades after the first standalone movie.
Peggy died off-camera in "Captain America: Civil War," but Atwell reprised the role briefly as part of a nightmare vision scene in "Avengers: Age of Ultron" (2015) and for an '80s-set flashback in "Ant-Man" (2015). Atwell went on to star on the short-lived series "Agent Carter," which lasted for two seasons on ABC.
The "Mission: Impossible" star made another appearance as Peggy in the final scene of the 2019 blockbuster film "Avengers: Endgame," when Steve traveled back in time to live out a happy life with her. In her interview with Horowitz, Atwell described the long-earned moment as "wholesome" and "bittersweet."
The actor made yet another live-action appearance in the 2022 "Doctor Strange" sequel as part of the Illuminati, a group that the titular character encountered in another universe. In this alternate world, it was Peggy, not Steve, who took the super-soldier serum and became known as Captain Carter.
Atwell's time on the big screen was short, however, as Peggy was brutally split in two by her own shield during a fight against Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen).
Atwell told Horowitz that she faces "so much slack" for her character getting killed shortly after saying Captain America's signature line, "I could do this all day."
"I'm like, 'It wasn't my choice!'" Atwell said. "When she's like, 'I could do this all day' and then followed by she's immediately cut in half by a Frisbee. And the audience being like, 'She can't do it all day. Apparently you can't, so, egg on your face.'"
She continued, "And I'm like, oh, that doesn't really serve Peggy very well."
Conversely, Atwell said that she felt like she was able to do more substantial work as Peggy when she did voice work for the animated Disney+ series "What If...?"
"I love that in that, they've been able to give her more to do as Captain Carter, Captain Britain," she said, adding that it was "frustrating" for the character to have such a minor development in "Doctor Strange 2."
"She had less to do than what she did before she had the shield," Atwell said.