Chiwetel Ejiofor is no stranger to comic book films as he is gearing up for the release of The Old Guard on Netflix. The Old Guard is an adaptation of a miniseries written by Greg Rucka for Image Comics but Ejiofor’s experience in the genre extends back to the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Doctor Strange where he played Baron Karl Mordo. While he is not a super powered sorcerer in The Old Guard, there were plenty more differences in the experience of bringing this comic title to life by comparison to the work in the Marvel world — a world which he is excited to get back into, soon.
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“Well, they were all great, you know, they’ve all been really good. They’re very different, you know,” Ejiofor explained in an interview with ComicBook.com. “[The Old Guard] is very different to Doctor Strange, obviously, and the kind of Marvel universe.” Immediately, the differences which likely come to mind are the practicality of The Old Guard on set versus the CGI heavy Strange. However, Ejiofor found significant differences in the characters, overall.
“These characters have a different set of attractions for me, I guess,” he said. “And there’s something about this that’s very, kind of, it’s very grounded. These are people who aren’t, who don’t celebrate their gifts at all. You know, that actually their immortality they carry as a kind of burden, which is quite an interesting way into this, into the story. My character, Copley, is very, he’s complex. I have a great deal of empathy for the character, you know, because of what he has gone through, but he’s obviously crossing all of these moral and ethical lines in the way that he is behaving and what he’s getting drawn into. And all of that was really interesting to play, and really interesting to kind of play around in, and to see whether you can sort of carry an audience through maintaining a kind of empathy for this sort of slightly strange guy.”
Ejiofor is fully focused on The Old Guard, for now, but it won’t be long until he is back in the saddle for more Marvel work. When asked where his Mordo character was during Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, Ejiofor simply teases, “I think all will be revealed.”
“[Director Sam Raimi is] coming on,” Ejiofor said. “I’m very, very excited about that. Obviously, we’ve been sort of interrupted as the whole world has been in the pandemic but hopefully we are back on track with that and continuing quite soon, so I’m very excited about it.”
Watch ComicBook.com’s full interview with Ejiofor and Harry Melling for The Old Guard in the video above. Are you excited to see Ejiofor as Copley in The Old Guard? What do you want to see when he returns to the Mordo role with Marvel? Share your thoughts in the comment section or send them my way on Instagram and Twitter!
The Old Guard hits Netflix on July 10.
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Image Courtesy of Marvel Studios
