Hugh Jackman has revealed how his newest role as Wolverine came to be. During a recent appearance on SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show to promote his new movie The Son, Jackman spoke with Cagle and co-host Julia Cunningham about returning to the big screen as Wolverine for Deadpool 3. “You had said, ‘oh, you know, I think I’m done,’” Cunningham began in a clip via SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show. “Sir Patrick Stewart said, ‘I think I’m done with Xavier.’ Until you guys walked away from Logan, and you guys were like, ‘we’re done. We got it. We just crushed it with Logan. It’s gonna get Academy Award nominations we’re done.’ But then you guys both had your Elton John, Cher moments where you were like, ‘ah, jokes on you. I’m actually back.’”Jackman replied, “I wouldn’t love to say it was planned. It was not. I’m a way more straightforward person, Julia…and Ryan [Reynolds] did try to cajole me in it for years, annoyingly years. ‘Come on, come on, come on.’”
“And actually it was, it was Aug. 14, I remember it, it was the first day of our vacation,” he continued. “So I had a week’s vacation from the show [The Music Man on Broadway], and I was driving out, and I, it just came to me like that, and I rang Ryan as soon as I arrived, and he was floored. He was, absolutely, yeah. And interestingly, he was just about to have a meeting with Kevin Feige at Marvel at five o’clock that afternoon about the Deadpool movie. And so he goes, ‘this is really good timing, but are you really sure? Cause I don’t wanna say anything.’ I said, ‘I’m a hundred percent sure.’ And I dunno why, because I was a hundred percent sure I was out before. And then all of a sudden, I was a hundred percent in.” Cagle asked if his decision was because of an idea for the film or character or if Jackman just realized, “‘oh, I need to do this?’”
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“Just, if I’m really honest, I’d announced Logan was my last, and then I went to see the Deadpool movie, and I was 20 minutes in,” the actor explained. “I was like, ‘Christmas,’ I’m like, all I could see that whole movie was, first of all, I loved the movie, but all I could see was Nick Nolte, Eddie Murphy in 48 hours. I was like, this is something I haven’t done, we haven’t done with the character. That’s the kind of dynamic we haven’t had before. And, but then I just put it aside. I was like, no, no, no, I’m done.” The Greatest Showman star credited his newfound acceptance to Marvel’s invested interest in the multiverse. “And then we made Logan, I was super happy with her, but all because of this device they have in the Marvel world of moving around timelines, now we can go back because, you know, it’s science and, and so I don’t have to screw with the Logan timeline, which was important to me. And I think probably to the fans too.”
Ryan Reynolds first announced in September that Deadpool 3 will premiere on Sept. 6, 2024, with Hugh Jackman starring. The next day, the duo posted a teasing follow-up video addressing the questions raised. His role as Wolverine in no less than nine films made him one of the top stars of the superhero genre from 2000 to 2017. The character’s last film, Logan (2017), was Jackman’s planned farewell to the role, and many fans found it poignant. Some fans, however, argue that Jackman’s departure from the X-Men franchise just before its availability to the Marvel Cinematic Universe justifies his change of heart. In X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Reynolds first appeared as Deadpool, but he played the character more prominently in Deadpool and Deadpool 2. In 2011, Disney acquired 21st Century Fox, which provided Marvel Studios access to the X-Men property. This upcoming threequel will be the first one since that acquisition. Based on the video posted by Reynolds and Jackman, Deadpool 3 will indeed be part of the MCU.
