all of them and brought back to life as agent phil coles and claude gregg have to say in all candor it's the most moving thing that's ever happened to me and now twenty five years of doing this to have a character that people really connect to and care about my no more then the audience but less than the writers and i kind of like that i'm finding it out is the audience does plus kind of the right pages from the governor because i'm kind of the glue of the marvel universe guys that's all next on larry king now. welcome to larry king our guest is claude greg the actor writer director you know our guest from his years of playing julia louis dreyfus is ex-husband on the millet

benches of old christine he's been resurrected from the dead and reprisals his role as asian phil coles them from the avengers on the current a.b.c. a.b.c. hit marvel's agents of shield it airs tuesday nights at eight pm you've had a journey you've had this character had a journey give me a little chronology write. my neighbor at the time john fabbro lived down the street from me in santa monica was put together a franchise that was not a well known comic book character at that time iron man was really not on a par with kind of batman and those characters and he put together this amazing cast with robert downey and gwyneth paltrow and jeff bridges and as someone who grew up reading comics i watched it from afar thinking i can't wait to see this movie and then i got a call saying they've got a they've got a part it's a couple of days maybe but you get to be and it's what do you think and i said how they're going to cut me out but yes i mean and something about this character kind of clicked you know with when there's all these. superheros around well it was i

think at first it was just agent. and then east there was something about what he was doing in the way he was had this marquee repartee with robert downey's character and then it started kind of adding more and more stuff and then they made him agent phil colson from the strategic homeland intervention of force majestic division which to wall comic book lovers is shield and that's the group that nick fury runs and they bring the avengers or the other in the i was in the iron man movie it and then i was doing a scene in iron man two and they said ok this time tell him you've got to go tell tony stark you've got to go you've got to go to new mexico and i said dubiously i i gotta go i'm going to mexico and of course robert just jumps on that and he says really levin chairman what's there is a secret and i improv back yes it's a big secret and after that it's such a secret i don't know what's what's a new mexico and they said oh gosh you're in new mexico and you're going to be in thor you're the one who finds the hammer has nobody called you and i that said no no no he's caught me but that sounds fantastic and it's kind of been that way every

step of the way i was so then you're in for then i was in thor kind of running the show a little bit managing the arrival of the god of thunder and then i was at comic con . about to do a panel with the cast of thor and i turn in this guy that i knew immediately because i was a fan of his shows joss whedon and standing next to me says i'm so sorry i meant to call you i've written quite a bit of stuff for you in the avengers and we're about to secretly introduce the whole cast can we introduce you with the cast right there comics like derek cummock on it n.b.a. in san diego and as i said i grew up reading the comics so i could have died on the spot in fact i thought maybe i was dying and this was the make a wish foundation they were just doing mess to kind of send me out of there in the event i'm in the end you're on this from our own man deplored to the avengers yet you're in the avengers from a guy named agent with a couple of lines to locals a guy in the avengers and i get a call from kevin five he had a head of marvel saying listen we really you have a really great role in the avengers and i said that's i'm speechless kevin i want

to say says yes it's what happens to you is what brings the avengers together and i thought that oh so maybe this is my last marvel film is it carefully said yes but you got in grand style you get killed and i get killed kind of magnificently they'd written a fantastic. digital stores brother loki the as guardian god of mischief sneaks up because he can kind of make himself appear two places at once behind me and stabs me right through the chest comes out the front of me with this as guardian scepter until colson dies and it brings the kind of diva bickering superheroes together to save the world so you die at the beginning of the movie no that's what i thought was going to happen i thought i'd be walking give somebody a job and get get taken out but in fact it was quite toward the end of the movie and it was a sad day i had to say goodbye to the guy and then i get another call which is we think you may not be so dead we we think that you may actually be ill be.

coming back to life for a television show called marvel's agents of shield are you interested and i said yes i m m inherently interested i don't want to do anything that would. you know undercut what i thought was really kind of moving and dramatic in the avengers and just gets on the phone and he explains to me you know that phil colson thinks he just had a close call but as it is in the comics the kind of mythology there's a much darker and more interesting story it's a mystery something much more magical has gone on to bring this guy back to life it seems so how do they do an explanation of how he didn't die from the night in the pilot you see agent colson explained yeah it was a close call they kept it from the avengers they told them that he was dead brought them together but they said because the older than me and never once saw him die and then as soon as i walk away cobie smulders who has a role in the avengers and in our show the dr next door says a close call he really doesn't know does he and she says he can never know and so

the mystery is born that there's more to the story all models agents who shields die rather than write it did fantastic ratings people have turned in when it didn't feel course and died to my great shock there were people partly because he was kind of the nerd in the avengers the human but he also was somebody who collected cards of captain america and was a bit of a nerd himself they were happy when he died and they started this kind of global twitter campaign that was hashtag calls and lives and they were not happy about it and i have to say i think people listened and i think that's the reason there's a show and. me again those people have turned out in force and really been very active in social media the numbers have been ridiculous told the premium for a.b.c. was the highest rated met or drama in four years a level two point nine million. i read a lot of point too but would have been a one dollar law right went down a little bit the next week but then i just saw the live plus three numbers which

are the d.v.r. numbers and it actually went up so the numbers were kind of amazing it's just a lot more people i guess are kind of d.v.r. ing stuff ageplay militias you can view it objectively from being inside it. why it is whole comic book phenomena it's a really good question people people when they ask that question i think as i initially did they kind of seem to be talking about this recent five six years of of the tremendous success of marvel movies and and this may be the spider-man movies but there's i keep thinking when i was a kid there's been batman on t.v. the batman movies with jack nicholson superman the t.v. show when i was a really little kid well and there is something about it i feel like it's a little bit like baseball you're a baseball fan we invented it it's our thing and it's our pop culture mythology or again there's something uniquely american oh well you know there's a lot there's a lot of kind of the little guy and in fact that's why my characters i think is

done so well i love the black berry you did know him and the green hornet love the green horse sub-mariner sub-mariner all i think we still need over them yeah absolutely submariners amazing or i love those yeah you got to start i understand in theater in new york you work with david mamet yes david mamet bill macy i was there a moment but it's a moment and william h. macy what was that company it was called the land of theatre company it's still there doing very very well was i got lucky really lucky i walked into a class at n.y.u. and and these two guys made it will you william h. macy was not a well known actor a terrific stage actor he hadn't really taken off yet and they. they had a really terrific group of people they'd attracted felicity huffman was one of them a lot of terrific actors and we formed a company and i spent my twenty's in new york up with or like yeah mostly new plays you know kind of we did were in chicago for a while doing theater we would go to vermont in the summers and then we ended up in

there and new york david's plays did some of his plays his lesser known place moves one acts to get started he was a huge support kind of had a lawsuit with somebody and he made them pay for our first season they wrote a great writer to reflect writer interesting character to became conservative right i believe yeah a lot of normal more politically conservative over the years but still the most generous the wisest person i know a friend up but you know his favorite writer yes david perhaps the best writer the best playwright i think in the last hundred years really put on the american people not oh tennessee williams you know arthur miller but still he's right in that he's right is in that to me the you prefer the stage you know there's something really fun about going to do the whole story every night some of the magic really kind of starts to happen in your body the actor's medium too right once the curtain opens it is it is i went back and did a play by ethan coen two years ago and i i forgot the pressure of the pressure of kind of having it all happen and not being able to say cut it really and i did it

for so many years but i'd forgotten that much pressure that why do you like acting so much. telling stories i think it's why i do other stuff as well like the other you're deriving the do you like all of it i do it kind of feels like different parts of the same thing whenever i do one of them too much and i start to feel like i missed the other there's nothing like being in the middle of the story you are in the way you are when you're acting you wrote one of my favorite scary thought much into scary thought but what lies beneath all thank you harrison ford yes just that white house for the such a good guy what a great humble regular guy harrison where did you come up with that i well bob zemeckis is an amazing director and he was very very kind they had a story that they hadn't been able to crack a ghost story and it was i guess steven spielberg's idea and they had a sentence or two about a a about. a couple with a ghost in their house and i had been in l.a. not getting any work as an actor and i had started writing i'd written

a screenplay and they said well we don't want to make this weird screenplay you wrote but we would we'd like to hear what your pitch would be on this and i was driving across country from directing one of mamet's plays in new york and i i thought of some ideas about this and i went and i told them they hired me to my shock and i wrote the script in ten seconds later i was at bob zemeckis his house and and we were working on it and he went to harrison and they said yes totally about trust me your most recent film would debuted at the robot the film flows trust me as a film i wrote the kind of in about three nights almost about a loser agent for child actors who everybody leaves when they start to make it he's really kind of a down and out story and then he stumbles on this girl who's a prodigy and they really hit it off and it's kind of right on the moment when she suddenly being discovered for this big franchise was in it i mean it. i needed someone who'd really been beaten up in hollywood and i didn't have to look far and

. and sam rockwell amanda peet friends of mine own lacey felicity huffman allison janney molly shannon who i went to n.y.u. with to tell me that it opens we're just closing a deal right now with the stars' company and anchor bay and it should be out in the spring you put one hundred with the kids to go. i'm lucky i i was able to call friends and sam rockwell was in my first film choke and once sam signs up everybody likes to act with him that is writing and directing help the other aspects i mean i think it does mean we move so fast on our television show and it really helps me to know how to do what i need to do in that amount of time to find out what the scenes really about now you're a guy you're in is it maybe you were in marvel's agents of shield saw iron man yet you also played leonardo in the film adaptation of much ado about nothing yeah i like it i love shakespeare but i don't get to do it there's kind of

a shakespeare club and i don't get asked but where did you shoot the film at us with his house why because. because joss is a little crazy in a wonderful way he had just finished making the biggest movie i've ever been involved in or i think we have ever been made in the avengers and i knew we had a week or two off before he started editing after the six months shoot and i was at his house for a dinner party and he said i said we're going to go we going to go on a beach i saw what you went through i hope you're going to rest and he said actually i'm going to make a movie of much ado about nothing here starting tomorrow and we'd like to be in it and you know twenty four hours later i was learning of an awful lot of lines and having one of the finest film experiences i ever had. gino and others told me that shakespeare is the best because he's sometimes unclean he's so great he's unplayable and that you could play any one of his characters many ways that there's

something about it i i hadn't done it in so long the language is so spectacular and it's not that it's florida or anything it's this role it gets in your guts you can't say those speeches and those situations without a doing something to you clark will talk about family and live on the set. so this . mission is. a critic a should be free. for charges free arrangement free. free. to tide free. download free broadcast live video for your media projects a free media dog r t v dot com. site . and big corporation mind. can do.

all that all about money and i think that's like that for a politician writing a blog and regularly. coming. here just to pledge. today. that. well that with a man with two first names. caught greg he stars and i just thought that marvel's ages are shield airing tuesday nights on a.b.c.

already a wild hit. you are married to the beautiful jennifer gray daughter of of one of my favorite people droll grey mine to whose father was making tats you're not jewish would you really and do it jewish how's that i am i go to temple a lot. what is always she doing these much anymore there's no we have a daughter who's twelve and she really had done a lot of work by the time we met eleven or twelve years ago and she was really ready to focus on being a mom she just said she just tested for a pilot the other day she's very picky she really like really what she's doing i don't think so she had such an amazing time on dancing with the stars which you know walked home with the trophy and there's an amazing dance studio project that she started to work on she's really found the real joy of dancing later in life is that so more dancer than no she's a magnificent actress but there's a version of a workout that she gets through dancing that she's turned

a lot of her friends on to that's really remarkable that i think she wants to share with people you have or good job i did show gray was kind enough to do a terrific part in the first film i directed called choke and he showed up and there was just whispers in the set he's such a legend is such a brilliant actor i mean brilliant he's one of the last great song and dance man you know he just did a year and a half of anything goes on broadway and was magnificent but he also just shows up on a film and it's just so we can joke about choke was a based on a book by chuck palahniuk who wrote fight club and it's the title kind of says it all it's about a i mean the story kind of says it all it's about sex addicted colonial theme park worker. and his hit with a crazy mom in a mental hospital and it's sam rockwell played that guy and jockey used him played his mom and joel played one of the kind of wise people at the sex addict meetings that sam would go to and was magnificent as your daughter feel about you so. this

twelve year old seeing her father in a dynamite television hit and hit movies it's for years it just didn't register with her because i really wasn't doing the kind of movies that she had any interest in and many of the kind of independent films i did she couldn't see in the marvel movies she was not interested in she was more interested in you know hannah montana or whatever was going on on the disney channel and then she went to see thor and she saw chris hemsworth and some of those handsome young guys on there and then she also saw you know scarlett johansson character natasha romanoff and some of the really strong women characters now she's really really into it and kind of loves the show it's one of the things i love about the show it's really fine for kids and even clark it has to be yeah exactly so she's finally i'm a little bit cooler to her which is good you're a supporting actor. you're a lead actor right now bearing greater responsibilities

a tougher it certainly as there was definitely a couple times i thought for someone who really has to deal with that and i thought oh no it's probably me this is my this is my kind of role in this particular show and i wasn't used to it but i've been at it a while and the cast is so eager and hungry it's really fun to kind of have them look to me to help set the tile having interviewed so many people over the years of interviews and directors who said they member want to be leads you know i know why they say that there's a responsibility that comes with it you have to carry the picture you know there's you got to find ways to to make the scenes where not a lot's happening still something that is dynamic and that people want to see you know a lot of times when you're a supporting part you get to come in and deliver really key crucial stuff if it's a good supporting role and and then let the other people do the heavy lifting i can see why they don't but i would wish for them that everybody gets a chance to step up like i have because it's really fun most about the whole marvel

experience. that's a great question ok what i like most about it is what they've nailed is i have hugely dramatic moments my death scene in the avengers and i have some of the funniest lines i've ever been able to see to say and i did a sitcom for five years with a brilliant writer and julia louis dreyfus to have that all wrapped up in one week and then a big action scene i never got to do action scenes i've got big hand to hand combat and jumping out airplanes it's just you kind of get it all wrapped up in one in a really fun package and how close is fool colson to you it's funny the people i grew up with i think or so and who are friends with me for a long time find it funny that i'm in a suit all the time just because in life i have a much more kind of t. shirts and playing basketball and not like that but there's definitely something about his. idealism uneasily blended with sarcasm that is also very skeptical you have to like to play and. i would hate to do this if i

didn't really love him but i i found when it came to the day that they were going to knock me off in the aventuras that i was a little bit of a mass that i had there was something about playing him that i loved so much that i kept turning to the camera saying is there going to be right pages from the governor because i'm kind of the glue of the marvel universe guys. before we get to the social media questions we have two questions from us is the show we cast on or a t.v. one what's the deal with the e.p. what's the deal with the haiti he's a magical place i keep saying that it's where i went to recover after being impaled and. as i say in the pilot it was a spectacular experience i had a beautiful physical therapist and i read travis mcgee novels all day but every time someone mentions it lately i seem to go into post traumatic stress so i think there's a little more to tahiti than meets the eye i'm hoping if nothing else this whole t.v. thing in the show gets me

a trip there. to do you know the secret behind colson's survival. ok so i don't want to i don't want to beg off that question but i do i do there's my i know more than the audience but less than the writers there's plenty they have a between they have yet i know a little bit i have some hints i know from what joss told me roughly where we're headed but a lot of it i don't know yet and i kind of like that i'm not finding it out is the audience does some social media question sammy friends on facebook wants to know will be avengers ever find out you're alive one thing i've noticed in working with marvel is they don't leave anything on the table if there's a good thing to use from the stories they've been telling that will pay off and that the fans want they grab it that's something the fans really want is some day of reckoning for this duplicity that someone took me on on twitter tweets how these days so versatile in your roles your grave in all of them who is that genius i

don't know how can i buy them lunch. version so they might have me versatile does the key to good acting and i guess i don't know so much of it is about picking good writing and picking good characters because i don't i don't think of myself as versatile but i notice that people kind of seem see different characters and what i do i and i think that's the mark of good writing serai garcia on facebook i was the feel to be loved so much by the fans that your terror deal was brought back to life and given his own series what does it feel like i have to say in all candor it's the it's the most moving thing that's ever happened to me and now twenty five years of doing this to have a character that people really connect to and care about the way people stop me on the street in new york like agent phil colson and i know he represents something about someone who does your wife. i was really a screenwriter who did some theater acting when i met my wife and i think there's been something she seems to enjoy it more than anybody else to see what's happened

to me which doesn't happen very often to be have really the kind of greatest work come your way after your forty prior john tweeze how does it feel to be a bad as action hero and describe your role christine character versus agent cole's . ok it feels really good for john to be a bad ass action hero. and if i remember right friar was fired talk the guy from harvard who fought it out with the staff. it feels really good the difference between richard campbell who i played on the new adventures of old christine is he thought he was as cool as phil coles and full course and actually that cool. ok we know a little game of if you only knew just a quick question quick question the first girl you have a kiss to do or was your name caroline's lessons or stones lessons i remember thinking that there was there was going to be tons involved in that there probably was a pattern era spose to move your tongue but nobody had told it to me how we. how i

say thirteen where did it occur at a party at an apartment complex in chapel hill north carolina if i ever know what happened i'm a slut injure you know her brother andy solicitors a terrific actor here in los angeles but i don't know really i don't know i know i'm going to be a first audition. i do i do i really auditioned a couple times when i was at n.y.u. for the road company of biloxi blues or for broadway and they had a character who sang badly it was one of them and yes wonderful and the legendary stage manager and producer many days and berg was the was the producer they kept i do the audition they'd follow me on the street we love joy addition but he's supposed to sing badly but not that badly they set me up with a voice teacher and no matter how many of the lessons i took i couldn't sing well enough to sing him badly for that guy very very marvel character. i'm a big big fan of

a guy named adam warlock who hasn't been in the movies yet they were a comic book character oh so that's what out of morelock is in the movies i really love i really love tony stark but i i also am blown away by what scarlett johansson does with that character agent romanoff hidden talent or is it and you have we may not know i make really good crepes for my daughter stella apes crepes superpower would you want we were talking about how great flying is. i think if i could get my daughter to put down her i phone sometimes i would want to direct you to the door with got there's so many i had a i did a little part with paul thomas anderson but i'd love to take on something bigger with him someday project you'd love to write or direct oh that's a good one. there's a cormac mccarthy book called red harvest that's just the how the west was one meets apocalypse now that they've been trying to make for years that's always been

a dream of mine if they were movie it's always one flew over the cuckoo's nest that pet peeve pet peeve. i don't love the turning with no blinkers that i see so much. thanks for that you actually to reflect really a pleasure claud bread thanks to my guests to refer to marvel's agents of shield airs tuesdays eight pm on a.b.c. hey it looks pretty good for a guy who was dead and remember you can find me on twitter or king's things see and that's. one of the wonderful sean marginalize the college face i describe you know.

a pleasure to have you with us here on t.v. today i roll researchers. were not psyched to an octave camp at guantanamo where patients are forced to the outer amounts of hunger strike never turned the world's attention to the point that some gulag of our time.

that was a new alert animation scripts scare me a little but. there is breaking news tonight and we are continuing to follow the breaking news. alexander's family cry tears of so why it great things rather that there has to be adequate regard in a court of wall around online there's a story sort of movies playing out in real life.

they're happy friday i marinate and this isn't bust and here are some of the stories we're tracking for you today and it's a leaks are hurting tech companies but now those companies are bringing their monetary mike to capitol hill we'll tell you all about it and starbucks maybe having a historic here but if shares are trading in we'll bring you the latest buzz on this coffee company and taipei's get excited your favorite store just had a spectacular i.p.o. so strong in fact that you might not be able to consume yourself plus we'll be talking with richard abilene about quantitative easing in japan whether the country's experiences can teach us anything about q.e. stateside.