In Marvel Studios’ latest adventure, “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” the Guardians must fight to keep their newfound family together as they unravel the mystery of Peter Quill’s true parentage. Picking up right where 2014’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” left off, Marvel Studios’ “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” continues the action-packed, irreverent, epic space adventures of Peter Quill aka Star-Lord and his gang of eccentric characters as they patrol and protect the universe. We are introduced to Awesome Mixtape #2 where the story follows the team as they fight to stay together while traversing the outer reaches of the cosmos. Old foes become new allies and fan-favorite characters from the classic comics will come to our heroes’ aid as the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to expand.

Before the movie blasts into theaters everywhere this Friday, May 5th, we had the chance to meet the cast at a press conference last month. Take a look at some of the hilarious moments that were captured and what the cast had to share with us about the new film.

Moderated by Kara Warner from People Magazine, it was just one laugh after another. Look at all those smiles!

Press Conference #1 with the below talent:

• Chris Pratt (“Peter Quill / Star-Lord”)
• Kurt Russell (“Ego”)
• Michael Rooker (“Yondu”)
• Elizabeth Debicki (“Ayesha”)
• Director James Gunn
• Producer Kevin Feige

Press Conference #2 with the below talent:

• Zoe Saldana (“Gamora”)
• Dave Bautista (“Drax”)
• Karen Gillan (“Nebula”)
• Sean Gunn (“Kraglin”)
• Pom Klementieff (“Mantis”)
• Sylvester Stallone (“Member of Nova Corps”)
• Producer Kevin Feige

The first question was directed at Elizabeth regarding her new role as Ayesha. Being a new member of the cast, what kind of initiation process was there, and what exactly convinced her to join this ragtag bunch.

Elizabeth: James convinced me obviously. He’s extremely persuasive, not that I needed convincing. My first day on set was when we were shooting in the throne room, and I was obviously terrified of playing this extremely powerful creature. I remember sitting up on the throne for a long time and all the Guardians were in front of me. It was so intimidating, and it was about two hours before we spoke to each other, I think. They all came up in this line to sort of come and say hello. I was like, please come and say hello to me! Someone say hello. And then that was fine after that.

Also new to the cast is Kurt Russell as Ego.

Kurt: They do this weird thing. I didn’t quite know what to make of it. You have to do this thing, you have to go to Chris’s house… I don’t know how much I can say. You have to bring over some food. The truth is that when I read the script I wanted to make sure I was kind of understanding it correctly and I hadn’t seen the first movie. All of a sudden, one day I was doing Hateful Eight stuff like this, and all of a sudden, boom, boom, boom, boom, my phone and the people around me are saying, are you gonna do, oh that’s great, are you gonna be Star Lord’s dad? Are you gonna be Peter Quill’s father and are you gonna do Guardians of the Galaxy and I, I just was like, guys, I don’t really know what they’re talking about. And I saw the movie and when I saw the movie, I immediately started getting it. I also immediately started wanting to do it. That was immediately followed by, everybody loved the first movie. What you don’t want to do is do something that’s gonna make them not like the second one, right? I don’t know about you, but I said yeah. I told James that. I said, I don’t want to mess this thing up, so I need your help.

James Gunn was asked if there is one thing that he wanted to make sure not to mess up.

James: The movie? I don’t know. I just wanted to continue the film from the first movie. So many sequels are not good. The primary reason in studying them seemed to be that so many of them just kind of do the same thing the first movie did with different template, and so they say, oh people liked the dance-off in the first movie, so what’s our version of the dance-off? People liked “we are Groot” in the first movie, what’s our version of “we are Groot”? And instead of doing that, we really tried to let these characters grow and change. We want to watch them become new people and different people in every film that we come up with. I think allowing them to be themselves and do their thing, I know that sounds strange because I’m writing what they say, but sometimes I’m just letting it happen inside my own imagination and letting the characters go where they wanted to go. I think the thing that I didn’t want to mess up was just trying to be a rehash of the first movie. I think people were surprised by the first movie, people have been surprised by the second film, and to give people something new and something different from what they already had.

Continue reading »