Lance Reddick voiced heroes and villains in the Marvel and DC Universes, but the late actor was supposed to play a mixture of both for James Gunn. Reddick, who died at age 60 in 2023, was best known for roles as BPD Lt. Cedric Daniels on The Wire, Continental concierge Charon in the John Wick movies, and Commander Zavala in the Destiny video game series. Over a career spanning three decades, Reddick loaned his voice to Marvel’s Falcon on the animated Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, portrayed Dr. Thomas Wayne in the Spotify audio series Batman Unburied, and voiced villain Ra’s al Ghul in Beware the Batman and Superman archnemesis Lex Luthor in Kite Man: Hell Yeah!
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In a new interview pegged to the release of Peacemaker season 2, Gunn revealed that he wrote the role of mercenary Clemson Murn for Reddick.
Lance Reddick Was Almost In DC’s Peacemaker
“In the first season, there’s the character of Murn, played by Chukwudi Iwuji, who went on to play the High Evolutionary,” Gunn said on The Viall Files podcast, referring to the villain of 2023’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Adding that Iwuji is “a great guy, one of the best actors I’ve ever worked with,” Gunn revealed, “I wrote that role for Lance Reddick.”
“Lance wanted to do it, but he couldn’t because he had another show, and so I had to find another actor,” Gunn continued. “Chukwudi came in and he just had a completely different take on the character. I think it was probably the best performance it season 1. Somebody like Chuk, he just found a way in. Nothing changed about the dialogue that the character said, but the way he approached it was how he got that role.”
The first season of Peacemaker reveals that the mercenary and field leader of a black ops team including Christopher Smith (John Cena), Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland), Leota Adebayo (Danielle Brooks), and John Economos (Steve Agee) is inhabited by the Butterfly Ik Nobe Llok, part of a species of parasitic aliens that inherit the memories of their human host bodies.
“There’s a scene where his character has been taken over by a Butterfly — these insects that crawl into people’s brains and drive them around like skin cars — but they still retain the memories, and the feelings, and the emotions, and the thoughts of whoever the host body is,” Gunn continued. “They’re able to access all of those feelings, and he has to deliver this speech about how he took over the worst person in the world he could find because he wanted to be moral about it. But he still lives with that person’s thoughts and feelings, and sees that even he had the capacity to change.”
“It’s just such a multi-layed performance,” Gunn added. “And when you see Chuk do it, it’s crazy.”
Gunn previously revealed that Iwuji could go on to play another character in the new DC Universe. “I think Clemson Murn is canon. Maybe his face might not be canon if we want to cast Chuk as something else in the DCU,” the showrunner said on Peacemaker: The Official Podcast. “But also, Chuk could end up being some other character, maybe [one] that isn’t so humanoid.”
John Cena, Danielle Brooks, Jennifer Holland, Freddie Stroma, Steve Agee, and Robert Patrick return for Peacemaker season 2, joined by new cast members Frank Grillo, David Denman, Sol Rodríguez, and Tim Meadows. Peacemaker returns August 21 on HBO Max.
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