Somewhere deep in the bowels of Marvel Studios, beside the room filled with unsold Tobey Maguire dolls and Andrew Garfield posters, sits a tortured publicist. Her crime? Allowing the press junket for Avengers: Age of Ultron to go from incredibly awkward to unbelievably dim-witted in the space of 24 hours. Her punishment? Being locked in a room with several Stan Lee lookalikes, each taking turns at doing impressions of Lee’s cameos in Marvel movies.
Yesterday’s news cycle was dominated by the story of Robert Downey Jr. walking out of an interview with Channel 4’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy when it stopped being about the movie and started being about the actor’s druggy past. Today his co-stars, Chris Evans, the jaw-jutting Captain America, and Jeremy Renner, who plays Hawkeye (the Zeppo Marx of the Avengers) joked about Black Widow being a ‘slut’ and a ‘whore’. After the Internet’s outraged reaction, Evans and Renner apologized. “We answered in a very juvenile and offensive way that rightfully angered some fans. I regret it and sincerely apologize,” Evans told EW. Renner said “I am sorry that this tasteless joke about a fictional character offended anyone. It was not meant to be serious in any way. Just poking fun during an exhausting and tedious press tour.” Great: just when she thought it couldn’t get any worse, now that publicist has to deal with her stars calling the the tour tedious.
