Chris Hemsworth is now part of the rare Marvel story that turns a backstage text into the main event. At New York Comic Con, Clark Gregg recalled that Chris Evans sent a message that simply read, “Assemble,” setting off a night out in Albuquerque, New Mexico while the group was shooting one of the Marvel films.
Clark Gregg and the Assemble text
Clark Gregg said, “My favorite text I may have ever gotten in my life was from Chris Evans and it just said, "Assemble." Albuquerque may never recover from that evening.” That line does more than deliver a joke. It puts a specific cast grouping on the record: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston and more were all part of the text chain that preceded the night out.
The setting matters because the story is not about a public appearance or a formal reunion. It is a production-era gathering, which means the real value is the glimpse it gives into how Marvel’s cast operated off camera while work was still underway in Albuquerque. The cast was not just together in name; they were together in the same city, during the same shoot, with Evans acting as the organizer.
Tom Hiddleston and the club
Tom Hiddleston added a more granular account from the same panel, saying there was “some dancing involved,” but the only two people in the club who were not dancing were “Messers Evans and Hemsworth.” He remembered hearing Evans ask Hemsworth, “But how do you get this [pointing to his shoulder/bicep] to here?” and Hemsworth replying, “I don’t know, mate. Like, just work out and stuff.”
That exchange gives the anecdote a useful edge: it is not just a cast hangout, but a snapshot of how the stars talked to each other when the cameras were off. For readers tracking Marvel’s old guard, the point is not nostalgia for its own sake. It is that a text with one word, “Assemble,” still had enough force to pull multiple principals into the same night.
Scarlett Johansson in VIP
Clark Gregg then pushed the story into the VIP booth, saying, “Okay, then I remember one moment in the VIP booth with a whole bunch of people there having a birthday, and all of a sudden people parted and there was Scarlett [Johansson] really breaking down some moves and seeing the birthday boy go, 'Happy...' He wasn't Ruffalo'd, but he was Romanoff'd!” The line lands because it adds a second moving part to the same night: the party was not static, and the cast mix kept changing as the evening went on.
The cast described the night as unforgettable, but the story also says some of the details should not be said legally in public. That is the practical limit here: the panel gave just enough to make the Albuquerque night feel vivid, while stopping short of a full account of everything that happened in the room.
Which Marvel film the group was shooting in Albuquerque is still the open question that would place the text in a tighter production timeline. For now, the important fact is narrower and cleaner: Chris Evans sent the message, Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston were in the circle, Scarlett Johansson joined the party, and Clark Gregg turned a private night out into the kind of Marvel lore that can survive one more panel.
