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She-Hulk: Attorney at Law poked fun at the fact that Mark Ruffalo replaced Edward Norton as Bruce Banner in the MCU. But according to Tim Roth, who plays Emil Blonsky, there was originally another scene that referenced the recasting, and it involved himself and Ruffalo.
"I've always wanted to work with [Mark Ruffalo], and it just happened to be this, which was kind of fun. But we messed around with [the recasting]," the Reservoir Dogs actor recently told The Hollywood Reporter. "I don't know if any of it made it [in], but when I looked at him as we were shooting, I was like, 'You've put on weight. There's something about you …' So it was that kind of stuff. We messed around, and we were encouraged to improvise and play. So we dealt with [the recasting]."
The Marvel show wound up addressing it in episode 2 instead, before Blonsky makes much of an appearance. When titular hero Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany) asks Bruce whether he is okay with her representing Blonsky, aka The Abomination, aka the guy who tried to kill him in The Incredible Hulk, Bruce assures her that it was so long ago, he's "a completely different person now." In 2008, Norton elected not to reprise the role as the nuclear scientist-turned-big-green guy all those years ago, and Ruffalo was subsequently cast as the character ahead of 2012's The Avengers.
"I think it's really funny. It's just the reality that we all are often dancing around, but it's true," Ruffalo said of the playful nod in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. "I actually joked with Ed about this. I was like, 'It's like our generation's Hamlet. Everyone's going to get a shot at it.' And there'll probably be another couple before it's all over. People will be like, 'Remember when the Hulk used to look like Mark Ruffalo? Now it looks like Timothée Chalamet.'"
