On how he got involved in the film.
They called me. They called me over a weekend; I was doing Avengers, and I didn’t expect the call. I heard there was like short list for a year or two or since the last Deadpool. You know I know that the tag of the first Deadpool is like you know, him coming out in his bathrobe and he’s saying the one thing to look forward too is Cable and all that. And I had no idea who Cable was and I didn’t really react to that thing. I wasn’t a comic book geek like that or you know a lover of comic books. And then they called me over a weekend and they said look you got to decide, there was just somebody who’d dropped out.
I wasn’t on the short list. I talked to Simon Kinburg who produced this, I talked to Ryan, which was a great conversation. I had always been a fan of his, so I was like I don’t get nervous very often, but I got nervous talking to him, and I was trying to be funny and I was more irreverent. You know that’s what you do with comedians, you try to be funnier than they are, but it never works. That was my relationship with Ryan.
On working with Ryan Reynolds.
You know I had been very lucky to work with unpretentious people. You know, like the Cohens and all that. They’re not really sticklers for you know compliments and stuff like that. So I’ve kind of gotten used to that whole thing, where everybody’s not stroking each other, they’re like overcompensating with their power and like screaming out you because they have the ability to scream at you cause they know you’re not going to run away. Whatever that is, he doesn’t have that at all. I mean he so finesses the producer, writer, “hey maybe what if you try this.” You don’t feel like it’s ever a manipulation with him. He’s a pleasure to work with, man.
Josh Brolin in Deadpool 2. Courtesy of 20th Century Fox
On his character.
Yea, I mean I said look, cause I had come from Avengers, and I said you know should I read the comics? Because I was given this great huge bible for Thanos and it was great to be able to go back and kind of research it, talk to people at comic book stores and all that. And Ryan was like nah you don’t need to do that. So I went back and I talked to Rob Liefeld and I kind of got into the idea or his idea of who Cable was. But there’s so many renditions of it that you almost get confused, so it became more about basing it off of one type of comic book, or one genre of that comic book, or one era of that trajectory, and then just going off with you know our imaginations. And it seems to have worked.
On his mood on set.
With like dramas, I find myself joking around all the time, I try to like go the opposite because when you finally do the drama, you’re getting into it, and you’re saturated in this horror and you’re in a bad mood and whatever it is. And this thing guy is so curmudgeony to start with, so I was stuck in this purgatory of having a good time but trying to respect the character ad what was going on.
On reprising his role.
You know I signed on for a few of them and I’ve never done that before. And I was reticent until I read it. I thought it was so fresh, and funny, and different than anything I had ever experienced in film. You know I saw the first one, I thought it was like beautifully inappropriate, which I can understand totally. And so this will go on. If this does well, we’ll go on the X-Force, and then we’ll do that, and then I don’t know what he has in store for Deadpool 3, if X-Force is Deadpool3? I don’t even know. I’m not producing the thing.
All images courtesy of 20th Century Fox.
