Secret Invasion: Backstage With… Samuel L Jackson and Olivia Colman on their new Marvel series

As actors go you don’t get many more respected than Olivia Colman and Samuel L Jackson.

Both have taken home Oscars in the last few years – Colman winning best actress for The Favourite in 2019, and Jackson receiving an honorary Academy Award last year.

Now the two have been paired up for new Marvel series Secret Invasion – and it seems they’re as much fans of one another as movie-goers are of them.

“I think I might have curtsied to you when I first met you,” Colman tells Jackson while speaking to Sky News’ Backstage podcast.

“Stop it, no you didn’t,” Jackson laughs. “We just looked at each other, started laughing – we knew how much fun it was going to be.

“When you see someone that you admire and all of a sudden you’re in that space with them, you kind of know, okay, this is going to be excellent, you know immediately whether it’s going to be a chore or whether it’s going to be fun.”

The series also stars the likes of Emilia Clarke, Don Cheadle and Martin Freeman – whom Jackson, it turns out, is a big fan of.

“I didn’t get to work with him, but I went to work that day just to watch him work because I wanted to see it,” Jackson says. “I had to go meet him. I was like, ‘I’m not doing anything with you, but I wanted to meet you so bad’.”

While Jackson has been playing Nick Fury in the Marvel franchise since he first appeared in a post-credits scene in 2008’s Iron Man, Colman is a newcomer. However, she admits she has been keen to join the cinematic world, or MCU, for some time.

“After every Marvel release I phone my agent and say I want to be in a Marvel. I don’t know if she had any say in it, but it eventually happened. So, yeah, I’m thrilled.”

Secret Invasion is set in the present MCU as a group of shapeshifters attempt to take over Earth. Colman plays MI6 agent Sonya Falsworth, an old ally of Fury’s – though it’s not clear whose side she’s really on.

Jackson asks her if her character is a villain or a villainous hero.

“I’m a villainous hero, I think,” she says. “Well, I can’t remember quite what happens and I’ve only seen the first two episodes, so maybe I’m not.”

But Jackson’s memory seems clearer.

“You’re a villainous hero and totally, totally, totally gangster. Let’s say that – you are totally gangster and you enjoy it.”

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The show is something of a political thriller and certainly seems more mature than some of the previous Marvel series, with admittedly less action.

Jackson says the aim was to do something different.

“This is proper intrigue and it seems like the Disney+ franchise, the things that come through there like Loki and Wandavision – they all have their own distinct personalities. And this is following in that canon I think in terms of it being more intrigue than anything else has been.”

Secret Invasion is out on Disney+ on 21 June