Evangeline Lilly Turned Down an X-Men Role Pitched by Hugh Jackman

Evangeline Lilly had a lot on her plate with the release of Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania later this week, and the actress has been doing press rounds for the film. Lilly plays The Wasp / Hope Van Dyne in the film and has done so for the majority of Ant-Man’s tenure in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But it seems that she was almost a part of another major Marvel franchise. While appearing on Josh Horrowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, Lilly revealed that Hugh Jackman once approached her to join the X-Men movies, but Lilly had to decline the offer.

“[Jackman] was like, ‘Hey, so, the X-Men guys are asking me if I would approach you because they know that you won’t talk to anybody,” Lilly revealed. “They knew I was working with you and were interested to know if it would ever interest you to do an X-Men thing. I was like, ‘No. It doesn’t interest me. I’m not interested.’ I was like, ‘I feel like such a dick because I’m talking to an X-Men! TheX-Men! And I’m telling him, ‘No that doesn’t appeal. Like, what?!’ I felt so rude!”

The next Marvel Studios film to be released will be Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quatumania. Empire Magazine recently had a chat with director Peyton Reed about how the stakes have risen going into Quantumania. “People felt like, Oh, these are fun little palate cleansers after a gigantic Avengers movie,” Reed told the outlet. “For this third one, I said, ‘I don’t want to be the palate cleanser anymore. I want to be the big Avengers movie.’”

“I grew up a real Marvel comics nerd, and there are a handful of antagonists in the Marvel comics universe who are all-timers,” Reed continued. “Loki, obviously. Doctor Doom from the Fantastic Four. And Kang the Conqueror. In conversations with Kevin Feige and Marvel, it was like, I want to put Ant-Man and Wasp up against a really formidable villain in this movie, and so we’re doing Kang the Conqueror.” 

“In the comics, Kang has dominion over time, he’s a time traveler. His situation is a little bit different in this movie, which I won’t spoil for you, but he’s someone who, [while] we live very linear lives, from childhood to death, Kang doesn’t exist that way,” the director smirked. “It struck me as interesting to take the tiniest Avengers — in some people’s minds maybe the least powerful Avengers — and put them up against the most powerful force in the multiverse.”

The studio describes the film as follows: “In the film, which officially kicks off phase 5 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Super-Hero partners Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) return to continue their adventures as Ant-Man and the Wasp. Together, with Hope’s parents Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), the family finds themselves exploring the Quantum Realm, interacting with strange new creatures and embarking on an adventure that will push them beyond the limits of what they thought was possible. Jonathan Majors joins the adventure as Kang.”

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania will hit theaters on February 17th!

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