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Joss Whedon on His New World War II Film and How He’s the Ron to Hillary Clinton’s Hermione

Equality Now's 3rd Annual
Photo: David Crotty/Patrick McMullan via Getty Image

Hillary Clinton may not have won the election, but you can’t blame Joss Whedon for not doing his part to try to get her into the Oval Office. Over the course of the campaign season, the director assembled The Avengers and a slew of other celebrities with his Save the Day Super-PAC, even promising a Mark Ruffalo full-frontal scene if Hillary Clinton won. (You got out of that one, Ruffalo, but at what cost?) At the Equality Now gala at the Montage Hotel in Los Angeles Tuesday night, Vulture asked Whedon what else he’s been working on since the election. “When I stopped to work on the election content, I was in the middle of writing a script about a Jewish woman during World War II,” Whedon said. “So weirdly enough, I don’t think I am going to have a problem getting back to that. I feel like the parallels are horrifying … It feels like the right thing to be working on.

That said, there’s still a big part of him that wants to be writing comedy instead. “I’d rather be doing something hilarious maybe — maybe I’ll do that next. I would just like to tell some goddamn jokes, and I will as soon as I get out of this depression.” Does he think that comedy has a political obligation? “Comedians have an obligation to poke at our boundaries and our self-importance, and some of them don’t get it and go too far, and some of them get it and go too far and it has a completely different effect,” said Whedon. “We have to be mindful that it is their job not to say the right thing, and I respect that.”

While Whedon is big on participating in the political process, don’t expect a campaign for Whedon in 2020. “I am ready to be in the corner of somebody like Hillary,” Whedon said. “Let’s face it. I’m a Ron and she’s a Hermione. I’m willing always to be her Ron, but I never want to be Hermione.”

Joss Whedon on His New WW II Film and Trump