Ryan Reynolds has appeared in everything from Scrubs to Bullet Train, but no role or project has defined his career quite like Deadpool. The star actor first portrayed the eccentric antihero in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Bringing an unique sense of humor and charisma to the screen, Reynolds parlayed his performance into two certified box office hits and the most highly-anticipated film of the summer — Deadpool & Wolverine. Funny enough, the film’s leading man never pictured his signature superhero role would take him this far.
“No part of me was thinking when Deadpool was finally greenlit that this would be a success,” Reynolds said.
“I even let go of getting paid to do the movie just to put it back on the screen: They wouldn’t allow my co-writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick on set, so I took the little salary I had left and paid them to be on set with me so we could form a de facto writers room.”
Through his experience, Reynold learned a valuable lesson. In his words, “time and money” are the “greatest enemies” of creativity when developing something as unique as a Deadpool film.
“It was a lesson in a couple of senses,” Reynolds explained.
“I think one of the great enemies of creativity is too much time and money, and that movie had neither time nor money. It really fostered focusing on character over spectacle, which is a little harder to execute in a comic-book movie. I was just so invested in every micro-detail of it and I hadn’t felt like that in a long, long time. I remembered wanting to feel that more — not just on Deadpool, but on anything.”
Reynolds will have an opportunity to experience that feeling and much more when Deadpool & Wolverine hits theaters on Friday, July 26.
