She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is Marvel's horniest show yet: 'We pushed some boundaries'

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is making up for a decade and a half of Marvel superheroes lacking in one major part of the human (and superhuman) existence: sex.

Marvel's latest Disney+ series stars Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black) as Jennifer Walters, Bruce Banner's (Mark Ruffalo) cousin who, after a car accident causes some of his blood to get into her system, finds herself dealing with the same mean, green issue that's plagued him for years. But instead of wrestling with a rage-filled alter ego like Bruce has in the past, Jen's journey towards becoming She-Hulk is much different — not only does she have a handle on her anger from the start, but she also retains consciousness as Jen while in her She-Hulk form. And unlike Bruce, Jen has no desire to use her new superhero status to save the world; all she wants is to get back to her normal life as a single, 30-something woman in Los Angeles working as an attorney, regardless of whether she's six-foot-seven and green or five-foot-four and human. Because really, who has time to save the world while also juggling a full-time job and going on dates?!

Not even superheroes have it all figured out, and that's where the half-hour legal comedy shines. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is a slice-of-life show, and instead of telling one high-stakes, earth-shattering story like MCU projects that have come before, this series spends its time focusing on all the aspects of Jen's life, big and small — including her dating life. She's swiping on dating apps, she's suffering through a string of horrible first dates, and when she finally meets a guy who seems like a great option, she takes him home. In the eloquent words of Jennifer herself: She-Hulk f---s!

Marvel Studios

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is Marvel's horniest show yet, and that was always head writer Jessica Gao's goal. "A thousand percent, I've been saying repeatedly that we are a very horny-forward show," she tells EW. "We're just all very sex positive, and so this is a very sex positive show. And we don't want it to feel like a taboo, because this show is supposed to be a well-rounded, realistic portrait of a woman's life — a single, 30-something-year-old woman — and sex is a part of everyone's life. It is basic biology. It is a very normal, healthy part of human beings. We didn't want to feel like we're going to paint a picture of this woman's life, but not that part."

Marvel movies and shows have long been criticized for being "sexless," and Gao understands why other superheroes haven't been able to get as horny as She-Hulk does... which is why she can't wait for fans to see just how different She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is. "In Marvel movies, they have other things to worry about — they're trying to save the world, they're trying to save the fate of humanity, so there's not a lot of time to then be like, 'But also, what's happening in the apps?' for them," she adds. "But on our show, because it is showing her daily life, the universe isn't at stake, so that is something that we really wanted to make sure that we focused on. The entire show isn't just about her dating, but it is an aspect of her life."

She-Hulk's healthy dating and sex life is one of Maslany's favorite parts of the show, and she actually lights up when asked about it. "Thank you for seeing us and for getting it," she tells EW with a laugh. "Jessica and I always talk about how the moments when Jen is horny are our favorite things. I also had a friend who said he'd never related to a superhero before he saw She-Hulk be horny for fries in the trailer, and I was like, 'Yeah, same.'"

Director Kat Coiro explains that showing that side of Jen/She-Hulk's life is "fundamental" to what the series is about. "Because if you strip away all the superhero stuff, this really is the story of a woman in her thirties, navigating modern life and dating and social media and family and friends," she adds. "That element of her life was crucial to the whole conception of the show."

Despite She-Hulk: Attorney at Law being a Marvel property and streaming on Disney+, Gao reveals they actually had more freedom than they expected to get as titillating as they wanted. "We're not showing anything that you wouldn't see on a network TV show," she says. Coiro adds, "From the very beginning of the journey, they understood that she's a woman and she is living the life of a modern day Los Angelino, so there was really never a question as to whether that would be a part of it or not. There were definitely conversations about how far we could push it and towards the end of the season, we pushed some boundaries that I'm pretty excited about."

Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel Studios

Ginger Gonzaga plays Jen's best friend Nikki, and a lot of her scenes consist of the two women having real conversations about life, love, feminism, and, yes, sex. They're the kind of conversations you wouldn't expect to hear in a Marvel show, which makes them even more powerful. "I didn't know it was going to be the horniest Marvel show yet, but I'm honored to be on a show that's saying so much about women in society and self-awareness, that just feels perfect," Gonzaga says. "You don't get to see superheroes doing the embarrassing parts of being a person, like seeing if someone will love you. Good God, is there anything worse? It's fun to watch that. That is such a weird part of human life, trying to find partnership. It's so embarrassing, and it's endlessly funny, especially when the person happens to be six foot seven. And green."

Throughout the first season, viewers will watch Jen attempt to date as both her human self and as She-Hulk, to varying degrees of success. "You're going to see a lot of trial and error, just like any other person who's used an app," Gao says with a laugh. "You're going to see the trials and tribulations, what a nightmarish hellscape dating in your thirties is. But you're also going to see that sometimes you can hit on something that's good as well."

Maslany loved getting to dig into how becoming She-Hulk changes everything for Jen, not just in dating but in every part of her life as well. "It's so much fun to see a person who is expected to be this kind of superhero saving the world, but all she really cares about is the minutia of her life and she wants to protect that," she says. "She has so much that she's worked towards that this other thing is distracting from. It's also fun to play with the idea of, suddenly you're occupying a totally different body, and you're being looked at completely differently, spoken to differently, objectified, all of that, and how do you, when you're the same person inside, contend with that outside feedback?"

She continues, "I don't want to speak in broad, gender assumptions, but there is something about her story that is very female in that regard. That just her existence as a woman superhero — even the fact that I have to say woman superhero, do you know what I mean? — is a threat. It's not even that she's engaging with being a superhero, but just the fact that she exists is a threat to people, and everybody has an opinion about it. That's a very different thing, a very different response to somebody like the Hulk. We would never be like, 'His body should look like this,' or, 'Why does he exist?'"

Marvel Studios

That's something Maslany had noticed and thought about more and more in the months leading up to She-Hulk: Attorney at Law's premiere. "With the trailer coming out, people already have started those discussions," she says. "But that's what's so cool about the script, is that Jessica knew that would happen. She knew what it meant to put a character like this into the world, and She-Hulk is so meta and so present in this cultural moment that that stuff all exists in the script already."

Ultimately, the series is a fun, meta comedy set within the world of the MCU, but Coiro and the rest of the creative team hope viewers get something more out of watching it as well. "I want people to laugh and escape and have fun, but then at the end of the day, they can also read into some of the undertones about what it is to be a woman walking through the world and seeing the world from that perspective," Coiro says. "That'd be great too."

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law premieres Aug. 18 on Disney+.

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