Ted Lasso’s Brett Goldstein on his Herculean MCU cameo

He’s here, he’s there, he’s every-f***ing-where, Brett Goldstein! In the MCU!

Thor: Love and Thunder is the latest Marvel film to hit theaters, and it brought with it a slew of surprises and memorable moments for MCU fans. Perhaps one of the biggest was the end credits cameo appearance of Brett Goldstein as Hercules, the son of Zeus (Russell Crowe). Goldstein is best known for playing the ornery footballer Roy Kent on Ted Lasso, a role that snagged him an Emmy nomination for Best Supporting Actor two years running. Now, Goldstein has made the leap to the superhero realm.

Marvel is well known for the intense security surrounding spoilers and leaks, so when Goldstein found out he’d be appearing as Hercules in the latest Thor movie, he kept it close to the chest. Not even his own parents knew he would be appearing in the movie. “I didn’t tell anyone,” Goldstein explained to Entertainment Weekly. “I didn’t tell my family. They put a chip in me that would explode if I f—ing spoke about it. It was terrifying.”

When the movie finally came out, Goldstein kept playing coy and sent his parents to go see the film without telling them why.

“I sent them a text saying, ‘I’ve just seen Thor! It’s really good! I think you’d enjoy it. You should go,'” Goldstein recalled. “They went, and my mum kept texting me during the film. I’ve always said to her, ‘Don’t f—ing text during the film!’ She’s texting me, ‘This is funny!’ I’m like, ‘Stop texting and watch the f—ing film!'”

"It gets to the end, and like 10 seconds before I’m on, she’s texting me, ‘Russell Crowe’s back on, he’s funny!’ And I went, ‘Look up at the f—ing screen!’ I’m like, if she misses this, she’s going to walk out and go, ‘Well, I enjoyed the film. I don’t know why you sent us.’"

Fortunately, it sounds like his parents did indeed catch his brief cameo in the movie. As for where the idea to have Goldstein play the Greek demigod came from, director Taika Waititi credits it all to MCU architect Keven Feige. “I can’t share much because that was all [Marvel Studios president] Kevin,” Waititi told Entertainment Tonight. “Kevin was like, ‘Hercules? How about we ask Brett?’ Kevin keeps his cards close to his chest. I don’t wanna be like, ‘Where you going to go with this Hercules character?’ It’s pretty exciting to open up this world of Zeus and Hercules and the Greek gods.”

We’ll be waiting to see where Goldstein’s Hercules pops back up as well. Will he be an antihero facing off against Thor? A part of Secret Wars, whenever Marvel gets there? Time will tell.

Russell Crowe almost played Satan instead of Zeus in Thor: Love and Thunder

Goldstein isn’t the only one who has a memorable cameo in Thor: Love and Thunder. Russell Crowe plays his Olympian father Zeus…but it’s now come out that Crowe almost played an entirely different role in the fourth Thor movie: Satan.

Concept designer Ken Barthelmey shared the original piece of concept art he was tasked with creating for Crowe’s biblical devil on Instagram, revealing that “Russell Crowe was initially considered to appear as Satan in a cameo scene. Eventually he played Zeus.”

"The task was to design a Satan close to Tim Curry’s Devil from ‘Legend’ (1985); big horns, sleazy and evil. Because it was going to be a prosthetic make-up, I was asked to give him hairy human legs and feet. This is what I came up with."

I can’t lie, it would have been pretty interesting to see Russell Crowe decked out as a full prosthetic Legend-style Satan. But we ended up with a Grecian Zeus, holder of all the invites to the deific orgy. Either way, it was pretty fun.

Thor: Love and Thunder is out now in theaters.

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h/t The Direct, IGN