When Marvel’s Wonder Man dropped, fans immediately noticed something different. Amidst the superhero spectacle, there was a grounded portrayal of a Haitian family that felt incredibly real, from the cadence of the Creole to the specific items in the background. That authenticity wasn’t an accident; it was the work of actor and creator Jean Elie.
Elie, best known for his breakout role in Insecure and his series Send Help, starred in the MCU series as well as served as a cultural consultant, ensuring that the Haitian representation was more than just surface-level. For Elie, the positive response from the community has been overwhelming.
“People are like, ‘Thank you for representing us in this positive light. We’re not poor, we’re not this, we’re not that.’ You’re seeing a regular family,” Elie shared in a recent interview with Blex Media. “It’s cool that it’s like on such a huge stage that people are going to be able to see us and feel our culture in such a real way.”
Elie landed the gig through a friend who realized the production needed a genuine Haitian voice to bring the script to life. When he joined the team, he made his intentions clear to showrunner Andrew Guest and executive producer Destin Daniel Cretton: he wasn’t there to just sign off on stereotypes.
“I said, ‘But this is what is going to have to happen… Where are you guys trying to go? Like, where are you trying to go with the mom? What are you trying to do with the brothers?'” Elie recalled asking. “Because sometimes people get brought in. And it’s like, ‘Oh, we just brought you in just… just for window dressing.'”
Thankfully, the Wonder Man team was “so serious about the culture and really representing it in a real way” that they integrated Elie into every department, from props to food to dialogue. This collaboration led to deep-cut cultural references, including the inclusion of the “bin” (or barrel), a staple in Haitian and other Caribbean households used to send goods back home.
“Every Haitian family at some point in time had one of those bins in their house… whatever you weren’t using… they would put it in that bin and it was sent to Haiti,” Elie explained. “The bin is important because the culture will understand why this is there and how we are always giving back to the people back home.”
One of the show’s standout elements is the chemistry within the family. Elie worked closely with the cast, including the actress playing the mother, who is actually Nigerian, to perfect the dialect and temperament.
“She put in the work so it doesn’t feel like she was mimicking and she wasn’t trying to be performative in her portrayal and caricature. She worked towards being a real person,” Elie noted.
He emphasized that the actors “wanted to understand context. They wanted to understand why we say the things we say… therefore it didn’t feel performative and it felt like a lived in experience.”
While Elie was shaping the culture behind the scenes, he also found his way onto the screen, though not as a member of the central family. He plays a Production Assistant (PA) to Simon Williams, a role that mirrors his own past experiences in the industry.
Interestingly, he turned down an offer to play a family member. “I didn’t want to be tethered to Simon as his family member… because I didn’t want that to interrupt anything down the line, any opportunities down the line where I could play a Marvel character myself,” he admitted.
Wonder Man is currently streaming on Disney+. Check out the full interview below.
