The series marks the first time that Samuel L. Jackson shared screen time with Don Cheadle. Despite being close friends in real life, the two actors have never acted together on screen until Secret Invasion.note This includes Avengers: Endgame, where they were in the same shot, just not on screen at the same time due to a pan.
The series originally aired during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Because the show premiered before the SAG-AFTRA strike began, the series' actors were initially allowed to promote the show.
In the first episode, Martin Freeman plays a Skrull that's impersonating Everett Ross in the Cold Open, and later cameos as the real Ross in the finale.
Likewise, Don Cheadle appears as Rhodey in the final episode of the series, but spends most of his time onscreen as Raava, the female Skrull who has assumed his identity.
Samuel L. Jackson returns as Nick Fury in this show, and also portrays Gravik disguised as Fury in the first episode, and G'iah disguised as Fury in the finale.
Actor-Shared Background: The story Nick Fury tells Talos about how he and his family would sneak food onto the train they'd ride in a shoebox due to being unable to eat in the segregated dining car is taken from Samuel L. Jackson's own childhood.
Author's Saving Throw: While their initial introduction was exciting, a lot of fans were disappointed that the Skrulls were given a dose of Adaptational Heroism in the MCU, as it implied that there wouldn't be any stories where the heroes have to fight a race of shape-shifting aliens like in the comics. In an interview from Vanity Fair, the people involved with Secret Invasion confirmed that the conflict will center around a group of Skrull extremists who are tired of waiting to find a planet to live on and are attempting to take matters into their own hands, thus leaning more towards how the comics depicted them.
Emilia Clarke had long expressed a desire to join the MCU ever since her Game of Thrones days, as she admired the franchise's popularity and thought it would be fun to be a part of, especially after how difficult the material and scheduling GoT had. She's since had nothing but praise for Marvel, and expressed pride in being part of this show in particular.
Olivia Colman was also a big fan of Marvel, and had frequently asked her agent to get her a role in the franchise. Once the opportunity for her to play Sonya Falsworth opened up on this show, she was more than happy to take it.
Don Cheadle was quick to get involved with the show upon learning that Rhodey would be revealed to be replaced by a Skrull during its events. He felt excited at a chance to play new, different, and more sinister angles with Rhodey than what had been seen in the MCU up to this point.
California Doubling: Almost all of the location filming of the first episode is in the UK (Leeds, Huddersfield and Halifax in West Yorkshire) doubling for Moscow. Specifically, the location of the climax is a notable building called Piece Hall in Halifax.
A very minor example with Olivia Colman, who expressed disappointment that Sonya Falsworth was a Badass Normal character without any superpowers. She did ask Marvel if she could "be bitten by something, or fall into a vat of something", but the higher-ups declined her request.
Emilia Clarke expressed discomfort for the makeup process for G'iah's Skrull form, noting that it made her feel claustrophobic at times.
Concept artist Jeff Simpson, who worked on the series' visual development team, was "devastated" to discover the series' AI-generated title sequence, vocally decrying its usage on Twitter.
While Ben Mendelsohn had no negative feelings about the show itself, he was rather sad about Talos being killed off during its events, as he thoroughly enjoyed playing the character and being part of the MCU as a whole.
Dyeing for Your Art: As with many of the other actors playing Skrulls, Emilia Clarke went through a lot of makeup and costuming for G'iah's natural form, having to wear colored contact lenses to change her eye color also.
Executive Meddling: Director Ali Selim revealed that Kevin Feige was the one who wanted the Super-Skrull Mirror Match between G'iah and Gravik in the finale, even saying that "all superpowers were fair game".
Executive producer Jonathan Schwartz noted in an interview that this show was heavily inspired by the Cold War thriller novels of John le Carré, as well as TV shows like The Americans and Homeland.
Fury mentions he doesn't like golf. Samuel L. Jackson is a well-known golf aficionado who has guaranteed playing time built into all his contracts.
G'iah's disillusionment with humanity in this series stems from the fact that she's had to hide out as a human for much of her life, and desires to finally live in her own skin. By contrast, Emilia Clarke found the makeup for her Skrull form to be arduous and frustrating (to the point where she's only seen in her Skrull form once in the whole show), enjoying herself far more while her character is passing for a human.
No Stunt Double: Emilia Clarke insisted on doing all her own stunts in the Super-Skrull final battle, noting that the wire work and action sequences she had to do was her favorite part of working on the show.
The Other Darrin: Despite previously playing her in both Captain Marvel and Spider-Man: Far From Home, Sharon Blynn does not return to the role of Soren in this series. Instead, her Skrull form is played by Kate Braithwaite, while her human disguise is portrayed by Charlotte Baker.
Samuel L. Jackson and Olivia Colman were mutual fans of each other's work (with Jackson in particular being a huge fan of Broadchurch), and so were nothing short of excited to finally work together on this show.
Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn were also honored to co-star with Emilia Clarke, as they were both big fans of Game of Thrones all the way to that series' finale.
Reality Subtext: The show's plot unintentionally leads to parallels to the current Russian invasion of Ukraine. Not only does the show feature Russia as a setting, but the plot features the Skrulls invading Earth and provoking warfare between countries. Much of this is likely coincidental, as the show's production dates back before the real-life invasion began in earnest.note It should be noted, however, that the Russian invasion of Ukraine had a long, drawn-out prelude.
Talos was originally supposed to die in Captain Marvel, but the story was rewritten so that he could survive. In this show, Talos is killed off by Gravik in the fourth episode, four years after he was initially introduced.
The idea of misusing a blood sample of the Hulk actually came up in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, until it was dropped via Cosmic Retcon, turning into one of the series' most contentious moments. Now it's being brought back in a series that's dark enough to address all the implications, in episode 5.
Release Date Change: Secret Invasion was initially slated to premiere during Spring 2023, right before the premiere of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. However in early 2023, Disney decided to delay multiple Marvel projects, with Secret Invasion being one of the affected series.note Industry scuttlebutt is that Marvel wanted the visual effects across all its slate to be given extra polish after repeated criticism over inconsistent and sloppy work in the entries of Phase 4. This decision caused the show's premiere to be pushed back to June 21st 2023, nearly 6 weeks after the release of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.
Troubled Production: The production of this show from beginning to end was...rather turbulent to say the least.
When the show was first announced in the fall of 2020, Kyle Bradstreet, supervising and co-executive producer of Mr. Robot, was announced to be the showrunner. He oversaw principal photography from September 2021 to late April 2022. In fact, principal photography overlapped with that of The Marvels, with Samuel L. Jackson going back and forth between the two sets. Then in July 2022, it was announced that there'd be reshoots on this show, which happened from July 2022 to November 2022 and also happened concurrently alongside reshoots for The Marvels.
The necessity of these reshoots resulted in Bradstreet being let go, and being replaced by a new showrunner, Brian Tucker. Based on the credits, Tucker reshot a good amount of the show to the point of effectively taking over as main showrunner. This is despite the fact that Tucker had significantly less experienced than Bradstreet, having only released a single film that did poorly at the box office previously. Not helping matters is that only three months passed between the wrapping of principal photography and reshoots, meaning Tucker was hired somewhere in that timeframe and had very little time to basically rewrite the whole show, and then only four months to shoot those rewrites. It got to the point where director Ali Selim said that they were still trying to figure out how exactly the finale would play out by the time the first episode had aired.
Overall, production during the summer of 2022 was plagued with people having no clue what story to write, scheduling conflicts between the writers and actors, and creative heads having difficulty collaborating with each other.
The show initially had two directors attached to it in its planning stages; with Ali Selim directing one half and Thomas Bezucha helming the other. After meeting with Samuel L. Jackson however, Bezucha promptly exited the project due to scheduling conflicts with Fargo, leaving Selim in charge of the series in its entirety.
Years before the series was even greenlit, Samuel L. Jackson had publicly stated he wanted a MCU movie centering on Nick Fury.
Carmen Ejogo was announced to appear in an undisclosed role, but ultimately did not appear in the finished product.
The casting for the series villain was initially for an actor in his 50s-60s. In the end, the much younger Kingsley Ben-Adir was casted as Gravik.
, the people involved with Secret Invasion confirmed that the conflict will center around a group of Skrull extremists who are tired of waiting to find a planet to live on and are attempting to take matters into their own hands, thus leaning more towards how the comics depicted them.