Ryan Reynolds and Andrew Garfield were paired up for Variety’s season premier of their original series Actors on Actors, so of course the topic of Deadpool and Wolverine was going to come up as a point of discussion. The film was the only Marvel movie of 2024 doing $1.3 billion in the box office, and saw the continuation of some of the most prominent Marvel characters from the Fox/X-Men universe. One of the coolest parts of the movie for all the Marvel fanboys out there was the inclusion of Hugh Jackman’s classic yellow Wolverine suit for the first time in the character’s multi-decade theatrical history.
The reason I bring up the Wolverine suit is because during the show’s conversation, Andrew Garfield brings up the topic of the super suits. Garfield played Spider-Man in the Amazing Spider-Man movies and in Spider-Man: No Way Home for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so it makes sense the actor was curious about Reynolds’ own experience with suiting up.
During a conversation that was largely about the actors’ other works, Deadpool was eventually brought up when Garfield asked, “… speaking of autonomy and creativity, I have a question for you about the Deadpool suit. The Deadpool suit, because it’s evolved [laughs] since you first slung it on til now, and I’m just curious about the evolution of that.”
According to Reynolds, who begins by talking about his own suit says, “Deadpool wears the suit because he’s in a slightly militarized shame spiral and his coping mechanism is humor. Wolverine is the one I was really worried about in the movie.” The actor mentions he was more worried that his co-star Hugh Jackman was going to be the larger challenge with the super suit because it’s something they’ve never translated to screen before.
Reynolds continues, “Right away people are bringing Hugh back in this iconic role and writing Wolverine dialogue is one of the scariest things I’ve ever done. Also, well you know there’s a scene you may remember in the van where he just tears me apart,” referring to the iconic fight scene between the two title characters to the soundtrack from Grease. Garfield responds that he’s seen the scene before as the scene most people saw before the movie that gave them an idea of the character dynamic between Deadpool and Wolverine.
” … it’s a gamble because he’s saying more in that one monologue than he’s said in an entire movie typicall. So like, Shawn and I were very worried about that.” Reynolds then jokes that Hugh is actually wearing a fur shirt but clarifies, “it’s a penance, he’s wearing his shame so we now have a visual totem, so at the end of the film when he’s out of the suit [sigh of relief] he’s unburdened himself of this bag of rocks that’s he’s carrying,” giving us insight into why exactly Wolverine carries himself the way he does in the film. This actually makes a ton of sense because the character’s largest challenge was dealing with the guilt of what happened to all of the other X-Men, and in a way that translates symbolically to the suit.
Reynolds sums it up by calling his Deadpool suit good old fashion clown work, while making it clear the visual of the yellow Wolverine suit is one of the main reasons they brought the character back after his last Fox outing in Logan, “I love narrative arcs, I love emotional arcs, and really love visual arcs… for me it really is old fashion clown work, and for Hugh it’s a huge component to why this character is back.”
So while this concludes the majority of the super suit talk, the entire show is worth a watch because there are some funny moments skipped over in this dialogue recap, plus another 40 minutes of interesting back and forth between the two actors pertaining to everything else in their careers that is not laced in spandex. You can find the entire episode right here.