Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. Actress On What She's Learned From Playing Yo-Yo

Natalia Cordova-Buckley may be the first member of her family to play a comic book character, but she comes by her love of Marvel honestly. As it turns out, Cordova-Buckley's grandfather was a huge Marvel fan, and she had no idea until she joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Like Cordova-Buckley, Pancho Córdova was an actor, and appeared in over 150 movies. While the bulk of his work was on Mexican productions, American viewers might know him from bit parts in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye. Córdova was a prolific screenwriter, too — he has close to 40 screenplays to his name — and directed a feature film called Los Destrampados, which debuted in 1971.

Unfortunately, Córdova passed away in 1990, over two decades before his granddaughter was cast as a bonafide superhero. Still, as Cordova-Buckley tells the story, landing a part on a Marvel show meant a lot to her and her family.

"When I got this role, my father called me in tears and said, 'Did you know that your grandfather would get in trouble with me, his son, with your aunt, his daughter, and your grandmother, his wife, all the time for spending the very little money that we had on comic books?'" she remembers. "I said to him, 'No, I didn't know that.'"

Getting a role on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was already a big deal for Cordova-Buckley, but now, the actress had a personal stake in the show as well. "Yo-Yo became even more profoundly significant because of the relationship the comics had to my grandfather," she says.

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is now in its last season. You can catch the final episodes on Wednesdays at 10 PM on ABC.