[NEW] Are 2 Marvel Characters Played by Enver Gjokaj Supposed to Be Related? | enver gjokaj – Australia.xemloibaihat

Enver Gjokaj is an Albanian American television and film actor best known for his work on Fox’s science fiction series “Dollhouse” and Marvel’s TV show “Agent Carter,” where he portrayed Daniel Sousa: a World War II veteran turned Strategic Scientific Reserve agent.

Sousa was hit by shrapnel during the Siege of Bastogne, leading to the loss of his leg and the need for the use of a crutch. Despite his disability, Sousa goes on to advance in the S.S.R., where he becomes chief of the spy agency’s newly-opened Los Angeles branch.

Gjokaj reprised his role as Sousa in the final season of Marvel’s “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” which aired last year. Although the show is primarily set in a contemporary setting, the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents’ time-traveling adventures provide them the opportunity to interact with Sousa, who is known in the 21st century as a legendary S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.

Deadline reported that Gjokaj will recur on the upcoming CBS spinoff “NCIS: Hawai’i” as Navy Captain Joe Milius.

Before becoming a professional actor, Gjokaj graduated from UC Berkeley and then went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts in acting at NYU as stated on his ABC biography page.

Here’s what you need to know about Gjokaj, his acting career and his history with Marvel.

1. Before He Was an S.S.R./S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent, He Was in ‘The Avengers’

I’ll never get over the fact that Enver Gjokaj played both the policeman in “Avengers” and Daniel Sousa in “Agent Carter” pic.twitter.com/QiYENtRlAb

— ✨∆LB∆✨ (@Ineffallene) April 7, 2021

While most Marvel fans know Gjokaj best as Daniel Sousa, he was first seen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a police officer in “The Avengers” during the Battle of New York. Per IMDB, he is credited as “Young Cop” in the film.

Gjokaj’s character is first seen in the movie running to another cop to provide an update about the National Guard. Captain America then appears at the scene to direct the two officers on what he needs them to do to help.

A deleted scene reveals that Captain America hands Gjokaj’s character — Officer Saunders, per his name tag — a Chitauri gun to use in the fight. The scene also shows that his character dies in the battle.

The Avengers Deleted Scene – The Cop & The Waitress (2012) – Robert Downey Jr. Movie HD

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Gjokaj is one of several actors who has appeared in different Marvel titles. Kenneth Choi, for example, was first seen in “Captain America: The First Avenger” as Jim Morita, a member of the Howling Commandos, and reprised that role in an episode of “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” Choi also appeared in “Spider-Man: Homecoming” as Principal Morita, a descendant of the aforementioned character. Other actors who will or have been in multiple Marvel titles include Gemma Chan, Alfre Woodard and Laura Haddock among others.

2. He Could Have Reprised His ‘Avengers’ Role in ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’

What if Agents of SHIELD is pushing Agent Daniel Sousa through time so that he can play a cop in NYC during The Avengers? pic.twitter.com/QPhavwTDbq

— Greg Noe (@firsthour) June 25, 2020

Ultimately, Gjokaj ended up on “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” as Daniel Sousa. But there were discussions years prior that he could reprise his role as Officer Saunders on the ABC show.

Joss Whedon, Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen created “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”, with the latter two serving as showrunners alongside Jeffrey Bell. The Marvel show’s co-creators had previously worked with Gjokaj on Dollhouse.

In an interview with TVLine, Gjokaj mentioned potentially appearing on the show earlier:

“There was actually almost a bit of a “false alarm” where this may have happened a while ago. There’d been talk of trying to get back my appearance from [2012’s] The Avengers, as that [New York] cop. There was talk of tying in my cop that appeared in The Avengers, but nothing was ever official.”

When Gjokaj was brought on for the final season of “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Jed Whedon told The A.V. Club that there was also mention of using the time travel storyline to have Sousa go undercover as a cop, tying back to Gjokaj’s appearance in “The Avengers.” That idea, however, did not come to fruition.

3. He Acted Alongside His Identical Twin in ‘Dollhouse’

Enver’s twin is named Demir. pic.twitter.com/L02nHDA9nI

— Tara | Marvel’s AOS Fan | Nerd | Geek (@Catmom221) July 3, 2020

According to IMDB, Gjokaj has two brothers, one of whom is his identical twin. He has an older brother, Bekim, and an identical twin brother, Demir. Although Enver is the lone Gjokaj brother to pursue a serious acting career, he is not the only one in his family with acting credits to his name.

Season 2, episode 10 of “Dollhouse,” titled “The Attic,” featured Demir in a guest role, according to this listing on IMDB.

“Dollhouse” centers around an organization that uses men and women as “dolls,” imprinting them with whatever personalities are needed to perform different types of client work. Enver portrayed a doll named Victor. The doll’s original self was an Afghanistan war veteran named Anthony Ceccoli who has post-traumatic stress disorder.

Demir’s IMDB page lists him as playing opposite Enver as “Victor #2.” The two of them each played a version of Ceccoli.

4. Gjokaj Has Starred in Off-Broadway Plays

While Gjokaj has become best known for his on-screen work, the Los Angeles Times reports he comes from a theatre background, having starred in an off-Broadway Shakespeare play before getting into TV.

According to the Internet Off-Broadway Databse, Gjokaj made his off-Broadway debut in a 2005 production of “As You Like It” as part of The Public Theater’s “Free Shakespeare in the Park” program. He portrayed Jacques de Boys and was a member of the ensemble.

In 2018, he returned to the stage to star in the Public Theater’s production of “Fire in Dreamland.” Gjokaj played a Dutch filmmaker by the name of Jaap Hooft. According to Broadway World, his character aspires to create a film about a famous disaster: the 1911 fire that destroyed the Dreamland amusement park at Coney Island.

Gjokaj mentioned in an interview with StageBuddy.com that he “had to work like crazy” to develop the Dutch accent he used for Hooft:

“There’s something about the Dutch that is very… Dutch. And a lot of that is in the cadences and speech patterns. It’s hard to describe but there’s something very forward and open about it. There’s no American ‘coolness’ where we throw stuff away and live in vocal fry.”

Accent work, however, was not new to Gjokaj. On “Dollhouse,” he utilized a Russian accent, as he mentioned to the Los Angeles Times. This happened when his doll, Victor, was imprinted with the Anton Lubov identity.

5. He Read Marvel Comics Growing Up

Daniel Sousa may not be a character that exists in the Marvel comics, but the actor who portrayed him was a Marvel comics reader growing up. So Gjokaj had a connection to the world before becoming a part of the MCU.

Gjokaj spoke with Marvel last year regarding Sousa’s appearance on “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” In the interview, he explained his personal history with the comics and what it means now to be a part of that universe:

I grew up reading Marvel comics and it still blows me away that I’m somehow now– I am portraying the character, to be clear, when I say I, that I’ve been a part of Marvel history now, and that I’m somehow in the Marvel universe as a character with some significance. It’s so fun and it’s such a trip. To this day, it’s still a real treat.

More specifically, during a roundtable interview Looper participated in prior to the “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” finale, Gjokaj admitted to being a fan of Marvel’s “What If…?” comics:

When I collected Marvel [comics] when I was a kid, I loved What If…? comics. I don’t know if you guys remember What If…? comics, [but] this felt like such an amazing What If?…What if Daniel Sousa joined the cast?’ So I thought it was just a blast.

Marvel’s “What If…?” animated series, inspired by the comics of the same theme, is currently airing on Disney Plus with new episodes every Wednesday.

It’s a Friday evening, and Enver Gjokaj (pronounced “Joke-Eye”) is having some trouble logging into Zoom from his L.A. home. Granted, there might have been an accidental password change that created the issue, but as he notes, it’s the COVID Zoom era— something was bound to be out of sorts. Then again, he’s used to being the person out of time… quite literally.

Casually sitting on the floor in a dark sweater and black-rimmed glasses, it’s no wonder why TV Marvel fans have a soft spot for the 40-year-old actor. He’s appeared on shows like Dollhouse and Extant in the past, but Gjokaj is most recognizable for his role as Daniel Sousa on Marvel’s Agent Carter, the disabled World War II vet-turned-agent who defied all odds to become the leader of the West Coast Bureau of the Strategic Scientific Reserve (SSR). Yes—the same covert agency Captain America once worked for.

Sure, he might not be Steve Rogers (a.k.a. the ultimate 1940s superhero), nor a typical man of the era, but fans were saddened to see his storyline tie up and possibly never see him on their screens again. Except, Marvel does have a habit of bringing back old favorites, as Gjokaj learned when he unexpectedly found himself once again donning Sousa’s suit and tie combo last year. He was about to be make a surprise return in the final season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., something the actor never dreamed would happen.

“I had no idea,” he says, reflecting on the moment he found out he’d be reprising his role. “There’d been loose talk about ‘wouldn’t it be cool if blank,’ and I said ‘that sounds great.’ When it actually came through, I was very surprised.”

Enver Gjokaj as Agent Daniel Sousa in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Mitch Haaseth

ABC

Gjokaj then breaks down this new Sousa, whom fans get reacquainted with after the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents time jump to 1955. He’s become the top agent in the western United States, yet no longer partners with Carter. He’s seen things on missions, making him skeptical and less accepting of nonsense. The biggest kicker? He’s supposed to be dead, the result of what fans learn was an ordered hit by HYDRA.

But TV fans know that “dead” doesn’t always really mean dead. The team fakes Sousa’s death, gets him back to their tricked-out plane, gifts him with a new prosthetic that lets him walk again, and he becomes the newest member of their time-jumping crew.

So he’s the same, and yet completely different. That’s alright with Gjokaj though, as he’s changed a lot personally since he last stepped into Sousa’s shoes back in 2016. “It helped that [the producers] wanted me to play Sousa as not picking up right where he left off,” he says. “They wanted to find him many years later, and it was many years for me too from having played that role. He’s not the same guy, and it was kind of helpful that I could bring Sousa closer to where I am now.”

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That’s not to say he doesn’t appreciate Sousa’s more traditionally era-appropriate tics (think that nonsensical idiom you’ve only heard your grandparents say, or “casual” being a three-piece suit), which he loved bringing out around the range of characters now surrounding him.

“There’s something funny and square about him, being old school. In Agent Carter, it was within that time. But now you take the same guy out of time… he’s almost the comic relief, because everything he does is so square to all these people from the future.”

He then bursts out laughing. “You know—he’s kind of an antique!”

Fans could see Sousa’s old-school values come to life in the form of his budding romance with Daisy Johnson (Chloe Bennet), which has been a slow-building storyline throughout the final season. While no one can deny the onscreen chemistry between the duo (affectionately called “Dousy” by fans), Gjokaj felt nervous about playing the love interest for a long-running character, and one who’d essentially gone without a significant other since the third season.

“I knew the producers had been trying to find a love interest for Chloe for a long time,” he says about the relationship. “Watching it with a bit of distance, I can actually see why it works so well. We felt like there was something happening, but then you see it on the screen… There’s something about it that I don’t know how, but it just works.”

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It’s been a tumultuous few months for everyone as the COVID-19 pandemic really set in, and Gjokaj knows the kind of toll 2020 has taken. He purposefully takes his time to properly articulate his thoughts when discussing the importance of mental health paired with acting, and, well, everything else going on.

Mark Griffin Champion

“Whatever I’ve learned about mental health mostly comes from doing a lot of things wrong that I found didn’t serve me,” he says. “I kept falling on my face time after time, and I got to a point where it was not sustainable… That kind of insanity requires a little bit of an anchor, and it’s not because I’m a zen person. It’s because I didn’t have one for so many years and I felt like I was spinning out a little bit and getting frayed.”

He takes another beat before continuing. “I think after ten years in the industry, I was able to hold it together and then I just got really run out of gas.”

Gjokaj learned that the best way for him to manage his own mental health was to go back to basics. Along with some breathing techniques, he’s into writing morning gratitude lists, which he says help keep him grounded while the world is still battling the pandemic. He also has a very specific mantra an older actor/mentor once shared with him that he likes to recite when he gets stressed out about doing too many things at once.

“On Friday, we do Friday shit,” he laughs. “We don’t do Saturday shit, we don’t do Sunday shit, and we don’t do next week shit. On Friday, we just do Friday shit. That’s my mantra for life.”

Gjokaj also shared an insight into how he’s spending his free time since the lockdown began back in March. He recently finished reading—and recommends— . He installed a pull-up bar in his home for some bodyweight calisthenics. And he’s doing workout videos he finds on YouTube or Reddit.

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He’s also hopeful that fans see just how special the final episodes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. are and the quiet impact the show made about people living with a physical disability.

“What I always loved about Sousa is he’s just a guy,” he says. “It was really important to see that this is just a guy who happens to have a disability, you know? He happens to have an injury, but doesn’t let it define him. He’s just Sousa, and I think he’s still sexy and an awesome super agent.”

While Gjokaj might be ready to bid adieu to Sousa, he’s grateful for the chance to come back into the world of Marvel and play a role he never thought he’d portray again.

“I never expected to get a second chance to play this guy,” he laughs. “I feel like I’ve won the lottery twice now. It would totally be unfair for me to expect any more.”

He pauses before finishing. “I’ve been very lucky in my life and my career. So I’m happy to say goodbye for now.”

The series finale of ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ premieres August 12th at 9PM ET.

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Adrianna Freedman

Adrianna Freedman writes all things TV and film for Cosmo.

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