Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds has had one of the most interesting careers in Hollywood, a career that has seen him appear in Hollywood blockbusters, mega-flops, romantic chick-flicks, kids movies, horror movies and many, many more. And throughout his colored career Reynolds has starred alongside some of Hollywoods and US Televisions biggest names including Mark Strong (Grenn Lantern) Melissa Joan Hart (Sabrina the teeange witch - the movie), Wesley Snipes (Blade: Trinity), Melissa George (Amityville Horror), Denzel Washington (Safe House), Jeff Bridges (R.I.P.D.) and of course his role in the season 3 episode of X-Files "Syzygy", in which he played Jay "Boom" DeBoom, a victim of the episodes two antagonists, two murderous teenage girls.
Having rallied with fans and director Tim Miller to get Deadpool made, after the blasphemous way the character was treated in 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine Reynolds is keen to promote the movie now that filming has wrapped and the responsibility of bringing it to the big screen now lies in the hands of director Miller and the post-production crew. Recently Reynolds had an indepth interview with GQ magazine, talking about his personal life, his career and of course Deadpool. You can read the Deadpool related comments below or visit GQ for the full interview HERE.
Are there times when you’re happy to headline a movie?
“Yeah. Deadpool, I loved doing that. That’s sort of a dream come true for me. But again, he’s funny and acerbic and a little bit of a head case. But he’s also not trying to be liked. He’s intentionally trying to annoy everyone.”
Was part of you reluctant to go back to superhero movies?
“A little bit. But Deadpool was different because there wasn’t a big budget attached to it. There was not a tremendous responsibility to meet some kind of bottom line. Those kinds of superhero movies when you’re out front, there’s a vast and quite frightening budget attached to them. This one had a super-reasonable budget, and it was subversive and a little bit different, and to me a little refreshing in the comic-book world. But you always have trepidation. When you’re out front, you have trepidation.”
In the Deadpool trailer, he makes that very pointed joke about not wanting his suit to be green.It made me wonder: What if Green Lantern hadactuallybeen successful? Would that have been a good thing or a bad thing for you?
“I mean, I don’t give a rusty fuck, because—I know that this is gonna sound like some sort of guy who’s spent a little bit of time in a monastery or something, but it all led to here. If I had to do it all again, I’d do the exact same thing. You know, also,Green Lantern—you gotta remember, at the time, everyone was gunning for that role. The guys I was screen-testing against are amazing talents. [Reynolds reportedly beat out Bradley Cooper, Justin Timberlake, and Jared Leto for the role.] But would I change it? No! And if it was as big a success, then it might have offered a whole different avenue of opportunities, or maybe I would just be kind of always that guy. I really don’t know.”
You’d be on Green Lantern 3 right now.
“Yeah, for sure. I think I would be probably in prep for Green Lantern 3 right now. That sounds about right.”
You were talking about audience fatigue. You look at this summer and you haveAvengers: Age of Ultron and Joss Whedon coming out after directing that film and saying, in effect, “I think I’m dead.” [Whedon to the L.A. Times: “It’s weird because the first one was very, very, very hard. This one was much harder. It a little bit broke me.”]
“Yeah. ‘I’ve legally passed away.’ ”
And then just last week, you had Fantastic Four really fail spectacularly. I’d be curious what your take is: Do you think that’s audience exhaustion, or do you think there’s something about the machine that’s breaking down right now?
“It’s a genre. There are good horror movies and bad horror movies. There are good comedies and bad comedies. Think of it like that. Think of it less about just superheroes. I do believe that they explore similar archetypes a lot, so I think that notion can be somewhat fatiguing, maybe. I think one of the reasons that Deadpoolhas gained a lot of momentum isn’t just that it’s funny or isn’t just that it’s rated R. The meta aspect is very important. So I think Deadpool’s coming along at the right time, because it’s also speaking to that generation and that group of people that have seen them all, seen all these comic-book films and enjoyed them all to varying degrees of success. But I think it’s speaking to them as though the guy in that red suit is one of them, to some degree.”
The guy who’s watching the more conventional superheroes and sort of wisecracking along.
“Yeah. It’s like there’s an element of, like, watching a DVD commentary by someone who’s got some pop-culture savvy and is kind of funny and a little obnoxious and is saying the things that you maybe wouldn’t say. It’s fun. That’s also why the film is budgeted the way it’s budgeted, is released the way it’s released, is allowed to be rated R, kind of all these things. Because for the studio, it’s actually relatively low-risk.”
What do you think when you see young, bright, up-and-coming actors in Hollywood steered relentlessly into these franchises?
“A lot of them are incredible artists, and they need to have a franchise in order to pursue a lot of the other interests that they may have. It works as a bit of a conduit to the material that they want to be pursuing when they’re not shooting the big franchise.”
I wonder if their commitment to the big franchise films actually prevents them from working on the type of material they want to be working on, because of sequels, contractual obligations, that sort of thing.
“Maybe. But then again—interestingly, thank God, there’s more and more opportunities for women now than there was. Obviously there’s a pay gap and an age gap in Hollywood that’s kind of insane and at some point needs to be remedied, inch by inch or mile by mile. But, you know, Jennifer Lawrence, she’s a movie star. I personally would go see a movie based exclusively on the fact that she’s in it.”
But she’s also in two franchises. And you look at a guy like Miles Teller, who hadWhiplash and seems so talented, and now is in this Fantastic Four maelstrom. That’s how we rewarded that guy. We rewarded Michael B. Jordan for being amazing in all his films with—
“But I’m more frustrated about the Michael B. Jordan aspect than Miles Teller. You know, Miles Teller’s gonna recover. Miles Teller’s gonna go on to do amazing things, you know. It’s important that Michael B. Jordan continues to go on and do amazing things.”
And you feel like they’ll make it harder for a black actor than for a white one?
“I know it’s not easy for a black actor. It’s not easy for a female actor. It’s not easy for a lot of people that are... That entire cast is amazingly talented. And I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. I mean, I know what that feels like. It doesn’t feel good. And it also is difficult, because you don’t feel like you can control that outcome. You know, as much as you want to. You can’t really.”
It must have felt really good on the first day of shooting [for Deadpool].
“Yeah! Oh, I made sure we marked it, too. Like, we just started rolling, and I was like, ‘No, no, hold on.’ We went in the other room and we huddled up: ‘We’re making this movie! We’ve been trying to get this movie made for six fucking years, and here we are. We’re doing it right now. Just remember this second. Just take a moment to be thankful for that.’ And then we all went out and just started shooting and dicking around and had some fun.”
[In the corner of the barn is a reddish, Mars-colored bust of Reynolds’s face, wrinkled and covered in scars.]
That’s a Deadpool bust, right?
“That’s my scarred face, yeah.”
Is it liberating to do a movie in which your face looks like that?
“Oh, really liberating, yeah. Because the character is called the Merc with a Mouth, and you have to explain that somehow. He can’t just be this guy who’s walking around and looks like a normal guy who’s just super-obnoxious. There has to be a reason for it. And the reason for it is because he looks like that.”
I’m sure your face is in the beginning—
“You see a little bit of it, yeah, on his road to looking like a fried taint.”
Have you ever had that experience before, where you’re the star of the movie but your face isn’t really in the movie?
“Um…have I ever had that experience? I don’t know. I have trouble keeping track of all of that. I have to confess, there’s a ton of films I’ve done that I’ve never seen. I just saw Adventureland recently. I loved it. I thought it was a really good film.”
Could you still enjoy the movie, even though you were in it?
“Well, yes, because I’m watching it objectively. I’m not really seeing myself, or I’m not really seeing, ‘Oh, there’s that trick I’ll do in that moment to convey this kind of emotion.’ You can’t remember any of that crap. So you just watch it. And that’s nice.”
About the Deadpool 3 movie
Deadpool 3 September 6th, 2024
Official plot synopsis for Deadpool 3 has yet to be revealed.
Directed by TBA, Deadpool 3's release date is September 6th, 2024.
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