As production on Netflix’s Luke Cage began, producer/writer Cheo Hodari Coker took the few spare moments he had to think of his grandfather, Bertram W. Wilson, who died in 2002 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
“My grandfather was a Tuskegee Airman. He flew with the 100th Fighter Squadron. One of the first black fighter pilots,” Coker told The Washington Post. “The thing that he always said was, you can’t think about the opportunity in terms of the fear, it being historic, all the things that come ahead of it. You just (have to) fly the plane. Everything else, as long as you fly the plane, will take care of itself.”
His grandfather’s words guided him as he began the process of producing Marvel’s first TV show centered on a black superhero, which began streaming last week on Netflix. Coker said he felt a bit of pressure to get Luke Cage right. But he focused on getting the job done — not making history.
“The added pressure comes from the fact that, if you (mess) up, people that look like you might not get the opportunity. You focus on the work. You focus on the opportunity to tell good stories first, before anything else,” Coker said.
When you have a bulletproof hero, even if you’re not telling a political story, seeing a bulletproof black man in the world, has inherent politics
If one thing put Coker at ease during production it was that he didn’t have to go out and find a star. Actor Mike Colter made his debut as Luke Cage during the first season of Netflix’s second streaming superhero offering, Jessica Jones in 2015.
“I think (Mike Colter) is one of the best pieces of casting since Sean Connery was cast as James Bond. Or even Robert Downy Jr. as Iron Man. It fits like a glove,” Coker said. He “so personifies (the character) just in the way he walks, his smile, when he turns gruff, when he puts the hoodie up. He makes all of it work and seem organic.”
Colter, playing the role of a reluctant, bulletproof hero in Harlem with superhuman strength, invulnerability, and a few secrets, spent many scenes portraying the effect of bullets bouncing off of him. The scenes were filmed with remote-controlled devices stuck to Colter, set to explode at the push of a button by someone overlooking the stunt behind the cameras. Colter says the devices could burn the skin if not attached properly to clothing, and he once almost lost hearing in one ear when he forgot to insert the required ear pieces.
“Those things are pretty loud. You get used to them,” Colter recalled. “I was never going to the set going, ‘Boy I hope they shoot me today.’ It was kind of a chore, but we got through it.”