Ryan Reynolds Says He Was Blackmailed Into Playing Deadpool In X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Saying that he made up a lot of his early dialogue for X-Men Origins: Wolverine due to the Hollywood writers’ strike, Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds told an audience during a Talks at Google presentation this week that there was an agreement that if he appeared in that film, Wade Wilson/Deadpool would get a solo movie.

In X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Reynolds said, “They sew his mouth shut, let lasers come out of his eyes. He has weird knives that fly out of his hands. I remember saying, ‘That’s really going to anger some people. That’s not Deadpool.’ And they basically said, ‘Well, you can play him or we can hire someone else to play him.’ So for me it was…I was a little bit blackmailed.”

You can see him sharing the story, with some foul language and laughs, below.

Based upon Marvel Comics’ most unconventional anti-hero, DEADPOOL tells the origin story of former Special Forces operative turned mercenary Wade Wilson, who after being subjected to a rogue experiment that leaves him with accelerated healing powers, adopts the alter ego Deadpool. Armed with his new abilities and a dark, twisted sense of humor, Deadpool hunts down the man who nearly destroyed his life.