“We were shooting in Atlanta, it was a bunch of us at his house … we were sitting there watching a game, shooting the s**t … he goes, ‘Have you read the new script?’” Mackie recalled Evans saying to him.

“I said, ‘Nah.’ He’s like, ‘You haven’t read the [script] — you don’t know?’ I’m like, ‘Damn’ — and you know, being Black, I’m like, ‘I’mma die, damn!’” Mackie continued. Then he went on to share how Evans guided him to a “work room” where “all his Marvel stuff” was laid out.

“[Evans] gets the new script, he goes to, like, the last 10 pages, and he goes, ‘Read it!’” Mackie said.

After reading the scene where Rogers gives Wilson Captain America’s shield, Mackie still didn’t understand what was happening, leading Evans to spell it out for him: “Because you’re Captain America!”

“It was a great time, and I couldn’t imagine, like, finding out any other way,” Mackie said.

Mackie made his proper debut as Captain America in the Disney+ TV series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. He is reprising the role in the upcoming film Captain America: Brave New World. It is scheduled to be released on February 14, and also stars Giancarlo Esposito, Danny Ramirez and George Harrison.