Ryan Reynolds on X-Men Origins: Wolverine

From: canmag.com
Written by: Fred Topel.

Marvel comics character Deadpool makes his first movie appearance in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Ryan Reynolds plays Wade Wilson, the mercenary who undergoes military experiments to make him a mutant.

Ryan Reynolds is Deadpool

“I’ve actually wanted to play Deadpool for a really long time so, for me, it was a bit of a dream come true,” Reynolds said. “I always thought that he was a character that sort of felt like a cross between Commando and Phantom of the Opera, by way of Caddyshack. So, for me, it was a pretty original type of guy, in this universe. I felt like I was ready years ago because I’ve been wanting to play this guy forever.”

Dreaming is one thing. The movie people still made Reynolds get in shape for the part. “It was a lot of sword training and a lot of working out with Hugh, who I remember, on my first day, looked a lot like a guy who was going to make a necklace out of my teeth. That was the gold standard that was set, from early on. Basically, it was about spending countless hours with the katana sword-training fellas.”

Reynolds had done action movies before, but Wolverine holds a special record for him. “I honestly worked probably the longest day of my life on this movie. It’s a huge movie, so there were several units going at once, and I had a day where I was going back and forth, from each unit. It was about a 22-hour day, and there was make-up and all these things, and I had to spin these swords at a million miles an hour around my body and, by about hour 19, I had a couple of extremely close calls with these katana swords. When you’re spinning these swords, you want to wear pants for that. I honestly just about lost my future legacy, a couple of times, and I had to take a little break and pour myself a nice shot of espresso, so I could carry on. That, for me, was probably the worst of it.”

Once the full Deadpool make up comes on, Reynolds needed his humor to get through it. “Having my mouth sewn shut was definitely a moment where you say, ‘Why am I method?’ but you go for it anyway. At lunch, snorting a steak was hard, but I got it down.”

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is out in theaters now.