Steve Agee on the “amazing” second season of ‘Peacemaker’, working with John Cena, and his friendship with DC supremo James Gunn
In season one of James Gunn‘s riotous DC superhero spinoff Peacemaker, John Economos transformed from a cowardly agent of the mysterious government agency ARGUS into a chainsaw-wielding hero who helped save the universe from a deadly alien threat.
It was quite the journey for a “creature of habit” like Economos to go on, but it culminated with him breaking his leg, finding a newfound purpose in life, and making a new group of misfit friends who dubbed themselves the ’11th Street Kids’.
Moving into season two, it would stand to reason that Economos, played with pitch-perfect sarcasm and insecurity by Steve Agee, would again be going on adventures with John Cena’s titular helmet-wearing antihero-with-a-heart-of-gold, Jennifer Holland’s badass Emilia Harcourt, Freddie Stroma’s politely psychopathic Vigilante, and Danielle Brooks’ delusional Leota Adebayo. Unfortunately, the reality of Economos’ situation couldn’t be any further from this heroic fantasy. Instead, he finds himself working his low-level job at ARGUS again, tasked with covertly spying on his friends.
When asked what has changed about Economos from season to season, though, Agee lets out a hearty laugh. “I think, out of all the cast members, he’s maybe changed the least,” he chuckles. “I mean, I feel like he’s still pretty similar. He’s still got his job working for ARGUS, and everyone else is pretty much scattered to the four corners of the globe, it seems.”
However, Agee concedes that Economos does experience change throughout the season, it’s just not immediately apparent to some of his peers. Forming a bond with Peacemaker and his crew represented true personal growth, as Economos isn’t a fan of many human beings. So, the fact that he is paired with new characters, such as Tim Meadows’ arrogant ARGUS agent Langston Fleury, is a fate worse than death for a man who generally “likes to keep things familiar”.
Agee grins, “Yeah, that’s the main issue. He’s put with some people he isn’t crazy about.”
Just because Economos doesn’t much care for Fleury, though, it doesn’t mean Agee felt the same way about Saturday Night Live cult hero Meadows. “I’ve known Tim for a while,” Agee nods. “We’ve never worked together until this, so it was a dream come true. Tim is one of the funniest people I’ve ever worked with.”
Working with Meadows allowed Agee the much-desired opportunity to flex some of the muscles he developed in his early career as a standup comedian, joke writer for Jimmy Kimmel Live, and sitcom star in The Sarah Silverman Program and New Girl. He and Meadows, for instance, have a hilarious extended riff about the plural of ‘Pokémon’ that was filled with so many great comedy nuggets that it was included in one of the second season’s post-credits scenes.
“He’s bragging about how, you know, while I was learning Pokémon, he was getting it on with two hot chicks,” Agee laughs. “There’s a whole section where I’m quizzing him. I’m like, ‘Oh, really, what did they look like?’ And that’s all improvised.”
Of course, Agee’s role in Peacemaker season two doesn’t entirely consist of him questioning a co-worker’s skills with the ladies. DC Studios co-chairman and co-CEO Gunn has positioned the show as a crucial cog in his burgeoning DC Extended Universe and, as such, it picks up on several story threads from Gunn’s recent megahit Superman, while simultaneously continuing Peacemaker’s quest to be taken seriously as a hero.
Indeed, one of the driving forces of the season is Rick Flag Sr, played by Frank Grillo, keeping an obsessively close eye on Peacemaker, who killed his son, Rick Flag Jr (Joel Kinnaman), in 2021’s The Suicide Squad. It is Flag Sr who forces Economos to spy on his pals, leading to some exceedingly dramatic material in a show that shouldn’t be dismissed as pure comedy.
“Oh my God, it really fuels season two,” Agee exclaims. “It’s amazing.”
Agee reckons one of Gunn’s real strengths is how he can throw together absurd, foul-mouthed comedy with big superhero action, then slip in proper dramatic weight and the odd bit of emotional wallop you weren’t expecting. It has served him well on the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise and the rest of his DC work, but the long-form storytelling of Peacemaker has allowed him to push these storytelling extremes even further.
In addition, Gunn has a habit of taking something silly, turning it sideways, and turning it into a devastatingly emotional story beat. Take, for example, Agee’s debut as Economos in The Suicide Squad, where Gunn floated the idea of dying his naturally white beard a darker tone to more closely resemble Economos’ comic book counterpart. After the first dye job was done, Gunn paused momentarily, then said, “Would it be funny if we just really over-dyed it? Like, ‘Oh, this guy’s a little self-conscious.’ He clearly dyes it, but we never mention it.”
So, in the movie, Agee’s appearance is marked by a notably darker beard than his natural red hair, but nobody says boo about it.
Fast-forward a few years, and Agee received the first scripts for Peacemaker season one. To his surprise, he realised, “Oh my God, there’s a lot of John Cena making fun of my beard.” In the scripts, Gunn had turned his spur-of-the-moment decision into a recurring gag, complete with references to Economos’ white roots showing through fading beard dye. He is mercilessly teased for it throughout the season, until the finale, when Gunn enacted the final part of his master plan, which terrified Agee beyond belief.
Suddenly, the nervous actor found himself staring down the barrel of a heartbreaking monologue in which Economos explains the deeply personal insecurities behind his dyed beard. On the one hand, this was a perfect example of Gunn’s ability to find the humanity in the absurd, but on the other, it presented his star with a problem. “I’m mainly a comedic character actor,” Agee insists. “I show up in sitcoms and say something funny, and then they go to a commercial. There’s, like, heartbreaking shit to this guy, and it’s kind of embarrassing to let yourself be vulnerable on camera with a crew of 100 people standing around watching you cry. It’s awkward.”
Thankfully, Gunn believed in Agee’s ability, and even though the monologue was “very emotional and challenging”, he nailed it. He teases that some scenes in season two rival it in terms of playing things “very straight and serious”, but working through that monologue in season one was very much “new territory for me as an actor.” Even better, it gave him newfound confidence in his acting chops, and he revealed, “I wouldn’t mind doing it more. It awakened something in me where I thought, ‘Oh, my God, I can do stuff like this.'”
Delivering a speech about beard dye that tugs at the heartstrings is, in truth, a perfect example of the weird alchemy at play between Agee and Gunn, who have known each other since 2009. Long before Agee played one of the villainous Ravagers in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2, pulled on a motion capture suit to be the on-set performer for King Shark in The Suicide Squad, or began inhabiting John Economos, he was simply a struggling comedian dragged along to an awkward Hollywood party.
“My friend Shawnee Smith, who is an actress you probably know from the Saw movies, was doing a reality show with James called Scream Queens for VH1,” Agee revealed, taking a walk down memory lane. “She called me one day and said, ‘Hey, I’m going to this wine and cheese party at James Gunn’s brother Sean’s house. I don’t think I’m going to know anybody there. Would you want to go with me?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, sure, I’ll go.'”
Of course, Agee hit it off immediately with Gunn and his friends, as he had “so much in common” with them, and he was invited back the following Sunday. As for Shawnee? Agee chuckled, “She never went back again. I went every week.”
Agee’s status as the Gunn party guest who never left shows no signs of changing anytime soon, especially as he now plays a character who can be easily slotted into so many DC properties. Having said that, Agee is always the last to know when the loveable nerd is set to return. For instance, he appeared in a post-credits scene in 2023’s Shazam: Fury of the Gods, but knew absolutely nothing about it until his agent called out of the blue.
As for Economos’ status post-Peacemaker season two, Agee claimed, “If James has future plans for John Economos, I don’t know what they are. I’m always just pleasantly surprised.” However, hope springs eternal, and Agee added, “I assume that, since he’s creating this whole interconnected universe of DC characters, that we’ll probably see me again.”
Agee has undoubtedly grown close to Economos over the years and loves playing the character, but in an ideal world, any future appearances would come hand in hand with two things. “I’ll tell you one thing I would love, and I’ve never really had this as a character actor,” Agee says, excitement rising.
“Just to see what James would come up with for a love interest for Economos. I think it would be crazy, but also awesome.”
Steve Agee
He’d also love to see the character “eventually get a little more agency and a little more power.”
In the meantime, though, Agee is having a blast playing someone “that’s most like me in real life, you know: kind of a coward, very reluctant to go on adventures. That’s me to a tee, and James writes it in my voice very well.” Whether the opportunity to play Economos comes in voiceover form in an animated series like 2024’s Creature Commandos (“It was amazing. Just me in a booth for maybe an hour or two, and James was remotely with me on Zoom, telling me what to do”) or shooting another series of Peacemaker with Cena, Agee is game for it all.
Speaking of Cena, the WWE superstar-turned-action/comedy movie icon, Agee couldn’t speak more highly. “He’s exactly what you would want him to be,” Agee insists. “He’s so giving and generous, both as a person and an actor. He’s always the first person to set. He always knows his lines. He never messes up. He’s overly prepared. Nicest guy you’d ever want to meet.”
In fact, Cena’s general excellence was what prompted Gunn to pitch a TV spinoff in the first place. “Really, the main reason James created this series was because John was one of the few characters who didn’t have an arc in The Suicide Squad,” Agee claims. “He started off the movie as an asshole, and when the movie ended, he was still an asshole. I think that just stuck with James. He wanted to explore why he was an asshole, and he came up with an incredible origin story.”
Until the Economos signal shines high in the sky again, though, Agee is enjoying something he hasn’t experienced in quite a while: time off. It’s allowed him to dip back into music, his first love, and he’s been having a blast. “I came to LA in the ’90s as a musician,” he explains with a wistful smile. “A few years ago, I actually recorded an EP of comedy songs, and they’re on all the streaming services under my name. And so I was like, ‘Wow, I have some more downtime. I’m going to write some more songs.'”
It hasn’t been all plain sailing, though, with Agee admitting, “A couple of months ago, I broke my wrist, so I’m having trouble forming chords right now. So, it’s slow going at the moment!” However, he isn’t one to admit defeat that easily. “I can tinker, you know, for about half an hour till my hand starts to get sore,” he laughs. “But, yeah, it’s really fun. I love it.”
