Mike Colter Previews Luke Cage At Empire Live

Luke Cage star Mike Colter made an appearance at this weekend’s Empire Live to preview the upcoming Netflix series. The event hosted by Empire Magazine took place at The O2 and welcomed Colter to the live recording of the Empire podcast before he headed off to a Q&A with fans, where footage from the upcoming series was shown.

“Luke Cage is a completely different animal. It’s a little spicy. It’s got a vibe,” Colter teased. The star spoke about working with co-star Mahershala Ali, who plays the villain of the show Cornell ‘Cottonmouth’ Stokes, explaining that they hardly have any scenes together because, “Luke Cage would crush him.” Colter also expressed his admiration for newcomer Simone Missick, who plays Misty Knight, and Marvel-Netflix regular Rosario Dawson, who plays the nurse Claire Temple. “She’s the Nick Fury of the shows, without the eye-patch,” he joked.

However, Colter couldn’t spill on any details about the upcoming The Defenders series as he knows nothing about it himself. But he did share some ideas on what he’d like to see happen on the show. “I’m hoping it will shoot in Harlem. If there’s anything going on in Harlem, Luke’s gonna go and take care of it.”

The big question posed to him was whether Cage was Team Cap or Team Iron Man. He weighed in, saying “I feel that Luke Cage is a hero-for-hire, though, so it’d be ‘who’s paying more?’”

But don’t expect an Marvel TV-MCU crossover anytime soon, as he pointed out that the universes are very different. “We’re trying to tell a story that’s character-driven,” Colter explained. “and not so much about the CG, the fight scenes and all the things that people go into cinemas to see. We’re trying to tell a smaller story. Logistically-speaking, we have scheduling conflicts.”

The 13-episode season of Luke Cage arrives on Netflix on Friday 30th September.