Every Marvel Actor Who Lied About Their Roles

Check this list of Marvel actors who lied about being cast in major movie or TV show roles - up until Deadpool & Wolverine!

By Kofi Outlaw - August 15, 2024 03:13 pm EDT

Deadpool & Wolverine was full of fun cameos by former Marvel movie stars – but not all of them were kept secret during production. Some of the actors who appeared in Deadpool 3 had to outright lie about their role in the film before its release – and it's not the first time we've seen it happen.

marvel-actors-who-lied-about-their-casting-roles-mcu.jpg — (Photo: Marvel Studios)

Read on for a list of Marvel actors who lied about being cast in Marvel movies and/or TV series. Maybe from now on, we can all learn not to trust people pretending to be others for a living.

Dafne Keen

Starting with the most recent culprit: Logan star Dafne Keen returned as Laura/X-23 in Deadpool & Wolverine – but right before that she had to do the press tour for her role as Jecki Lon in Star Wars: The Acolyte. Naturally, reporters were curious to know if X-23 would show up in Deadpool 3 – and Keen outright lied about it in multiple interviews.

Since Deadpool & Wolverine's Final trailers revealed her role in the film, Keen has been more open about her deception, telling EW that "I had a great time keeping it secret... I got asked in every interview, and I just got to lie, which was really funny."

Best of all: Keen blamed another Marvel actor for teaching her the ways of playing with the press...

Andrew Garfield

The new Godfather of Marvel Movie liars, Andrew Garfield gained infamy (and even more acting cred) for the way he looked into the eyes of numerous reporters and lied about his role in Spider-Man: No Way Home.

In his defense, Garfield explained that Marvel makes actors do the 'deny, deny, deny' dance, and that he framed it as preserving something special for the fans:

"The company makes you do it. But also it's kind of fun to do, too. You're planning a surprise party for people and they're, like, tell us the surprise is happening and you're, like, there's no surprise party happening," Garfield previously told The View.

Garfield's deception has led to Marvel movie actors like Dafne Keen following his example – but it definitely hasn't stopped fans from loving him.

Brie Larson

Captain Marvel star Brie Larson lied right to an MTV UK reporter about being cast as Captain Marvel, back in early June of 2016; a few weeks later, in July, during Comic-Con 2016, Marvel would reveal Larson as Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel onstage, during their Hall H presentation.

What makes Brie Larson's case slightly egregious is how she completely feigned ignorance about knowing who Captain Marvel even was, leading the poor reporter on a fabricated journey of confusion – about Captain Marvel being a boy, or whether the character was the same as Chris Evans' Captain America. She finished her performance by pretending to be totally air-headed about comic book character knowledge but did acknowledge fans for fan-casting her.

Go back and watch that interview and see firsthand why Brie Larson has an Oscar under her belt.

Paul Rudd

Ant-Man star Paul Rudd has a public persona crafted around being a lovable every-man type (who mysteriously never ages). However, Rudd knows how to put that persona to use, fooling the public...

In 2013, Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige revealed that Ant-Man casting was underway; in December of 2013, Paul Rudd was asked about rumors that HE was playing Ant-Man and told a reporter it was just that – rumors. Just days later, Marvel Studios would announce Rudd as Scott Lang/Ant-Man and Michael Douglas as Hank Pym.

Benedict Cumberbatch

doctor-strange-2-multiverse-of-madness-stephen-strange.png — (Photo: Marvel Studios)

Benedict Cumberbatch was a real-life warlock prior to being announced as the MCU Doctor Strange: he told an entire Comic-Con audience he had gotten the role, without anyone realizing he'd confessed anything at all.

During the 2014 Comic-Con Panel for Peguins of Madagascar, Cumberbatch and actor John Malkovich were both asked which superhero characters they would want to play. Malkovich jokingly answered that Superman's "Lois Lane" was his choice of role; Cumberbatch told the crowd he would be "Nurse Normal," an inverted flip of the name "Doctor Strange" which took a minute for the crowd to understand. Cumberbatch quickly labeled it a "joke" about being Doctor Strange – but by the Summer of 2014, Marvel, director Scott Derrickson, and screenwriter Jon Spaihts were indeed leaning heavily in his direction for the role, and had made contact.

To be fair, during Comic-Con 2014 Cumberbatch was under the impression that scheduling would prevent him from playing Doctor Strange; Marvel Studios would eventually push back the shoot to accommodate Cumberbatch so that he could accept the role.

Jonathan Majors

When Jonathan Majors was cast as Kang the Conqueror in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Marvel fans immediately began speculating that he would first get a surprise debut as Kang (or one of his many variants) in the Loki Disney+ series.

Majors downplayed that crossover, telling Variety in late June of 2021, "I have no idea what you're talking about," when asked if he was part of Loki's story. A few weeks later, the Loki Season 1 finale was released, featuring Majors' Kang variant He Who Remains as a major guest star.

Given how Jonathan Majors' MCU career ended, it's probably not a good look to see him making false denials...

Tatiana Maslany

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law star Tatiana Maslany got thrown in the deep end of joining the MCU, when her casting as Jennifer Walter/She-Hulk began to trickle down through the Internet rumor mill in the Summer of 2020. One of big trades reported in September 2020 that Maslany had landed the She-Hulk role, all but confirming it.

However, in a mid-October 2020 interview, Maslany claimed her She-Hulk casting was just a rumor, stating "That actually isn't a real thing and it's like a press release that's gotten out of hand... but it's not actually a thing, unfortunately."

The trades hit back with a second confirmation of the casting in November 2020, before Marvel Studios finally, officially, announced Maslany was playing She-Hulk in December.

Later on, Maslany copped to the fact that she'd been untrue in her claims, stating, "I flat-out lied," [laughter]. "That's also because I don't know what I'm allowed to say!"

Hailee Steinfeld

Bad timing forced poor Hailee Steinfeld to do a marathon run of downplaying and denying before she was officially announced as Kate Bishop/Hawkeye in the MCU.

Marvel and DIsney+ announced a Hawkeye streaming series during Comic-Con 2019 (July) and offered Steinfeld the role of Kate Bishop in the series by September. However, Steinfeld had logistical issues with other roles she was contracted for, which led to her stating in a November 2019 interview that joining the MCU as Kate Bishop was "not something that's necessarily happening."

By the time Steinfeld and Marvel worked things out, the COVID-19 pandemic had hit and the actress was forced to continue downplaying her casting until Marvel Studios was back in production. Marvel finally made an official announcement about her casting a year later, in December of 2020.