Willow Star Reveals Which X-Men Character He’d Want To Play (Exclusive)

The first season of Willow is coming to an end next week, and the new series has brought back some iconic characters from the original 1988 film as well as introduced some exciting newcomers. One such actor is Amar Chadha-Patel who plays Boorman, a character who has a similar energy to Madmartigen, the lovable trickster and warrior played by Val Kilmer in the original movie. After watching Chadha-Patel, the folks at ComicBook.com couldn’t help but see him joining another big franchise like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so we asked him if he had any dream superhero roles. 

“Man, I feel like they’ve all filled up?” Chadha-Patel said about comic book parts. We mentioned that there are still plenty of X-Men roles to fill in the future, and the actor added, “I would love to play Gambit. He’s the coolest character of all time. I’m sure there’d be some people out there who wouldn’t like it because he’s not a brown man, but don’t know. Yeah. He’s got a cane and he makes things electric, or he explodes stuff. Gambit’s incredible.” 

Will Channing Tatum Ever Play Gambit?

While we would absolutely love to see Chadha-Patel take on the role of Gambit, there’s another actor who has been gunning for the role for quite some time. While it was officially removed from the release schedule back in 2019, the long-planned Gambit film starring Channing Tatum is something that is still often brought up among Marvel fans. In fact, there are rumors that he could be playing the role in Deadpool 3. 

What Classic Film Character Inspired Amar Chadha-Patel’s Willow Performance?

“We knew going in, he was going to be this archetype of the guy with the sword and make jokes and he was funny and loud,” Chadha-Patel told ComicBook.com at the Willow premiere. “But the whole point of him was to deconstruct that archetype and make him a little bit more fragile.” He added, “And Jon [Kasdan] and I spent a lot of time trying to make him physical and that Toshiro Mifune is a Japanese actor in Seven Samurai. He’s a really big influence because he’s just like a caged tiger. So there was a lot of physical work that went into making him funny but also stoic. It was a really interesting process.”  

Would you like to see Amar Chadha-Patel play a comic book character? Tell us in the comments!