Aaron Stanford Thought His Time Playing a Mutant Was Over — Then He Got a Call
18 years after originating the role of John Allerdyce/Pyro in 2006’s X2: X-Men United, Aaron Stanford is set to return as the hot-headed mutant in the upcoming Deadpool & Wolverine.
While it is well known that the third installment in the Deadpool franchise will be chocked full of returning characters and cameos, Stanford is one of the few actors who can publically discuss his return after Pyro was featured in the film’s first trailer.
Photo: Marvel
“Is that true? Is everyone else still completely hidden?” he asked during a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly.
The Comeback Begins
Stanford knew that “something was percolating for a while” at Marvel after receiving a series of phone calls from the studios.
Photo: Entertainment Weekly
“They wanted to know what my availability was, but they wouldn’t say what it was in regards to,” Stanford recalls. “Then there was another phone call and another phone call and just more and more inquiries.”
Eventually, everything came together when Marvel asked Stanford to connect with Deadpool & Wolverine director Shawn Levy.
Photo: Variety
“He said, ‘Yeah, you guessed correctly. We want to bring Pyro back after 20 years,'” Stanford recalled.
Stanford Reflects on His Initial Audition
Looking back at his initial audition for X2, Stanford recalls thinking that he had no chance of getting the role.
“I thought I had absolutely no chance at it, and so I didn’t take it as seriously as maybe I would’ve, which is probably the reason that I got it,” Stanford says.
During the audition process, Stanford had few lines. The scene he read was the memorable segment where Iceman, Rogue, and Pyro are pinned down by the police, and Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine is presumed dead.
“That was the whole audition. That was it,” Stanford says. “What they were doing was saying, ‘Okay, we know there’s not a lot to work with here, so do what you will. Go ahead and improv.'”
Stanford began to hurl imaginary fireballs around the room.
“What came to me was, I’m blowing up all these cops, so maybe I’m taunting them,” the actor explained. “I started singing the theme song to Cops. ‘Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do when they come for you?'”
Photo: X-Men Movies Wiki
Stanford says he left the audition embarrassed, but he eventually got the role.
Pyro’s Return Was a Long Time Coming
After returning as Pyro in X-Men: The Last Stand, Stanford believed that his days of playing a mutant were over. While it briefly seemed like the actor could return for 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, it was not to be.
“For whatever reason it didn’t happen,” Stanford says. “I think they made reference to Pyro being dead in the movies or something like that, so I got a nod out of it. I essentially just assumed that was it. And I had done those movies, a lot of time had passed, and they were cherished memories. I didn’t believe that Pyro would be making any more appearances.”
Then, Stanford got the callback for Deadpool & Wolverine.
For his return as Pyro, not only was the actor thrilled to finally get to wear a comic-accurate suit but he was also impressed with the lengths that Levy and the Deadpool team went to in order to ensure that the film looked realistic.
Photo: Entertainment Weekly
“The very first set I saw was this just gigantic desert wasteland with all of these practical set pieces that stretched the length of a football field,” Stanford recalls. “I would certainly have expected something like that to be all green screen, but the pains that were taken and the amount of resources and labor that had to go into physically building this world just absolutely astonished me.”
What We Can Expect From Pyro in ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’
While Stanford does not want to give too much away ahead of Deadpool & Wolverine‘s debut (he admits he is scared of Marvel), he did reveal that Pyro gets his own car in the movie.
Photo: Marvel
“It’s this gigantic stretch hot rod,” he says. “They built that thing and we raced it across the desert. I’m sitting there strapped into a pilot’s chair behind a minigun. The very first time that we raced across the expanse, one of the exhaust pipes broke off the front of it. You heard this tremendous racket explosion. As it fell, it dropped under the car and probably almost busted an axle. So, yeah, that was an exciting little first run in that car.”
Photo: Marvel
Deadpool & Wolverine will hit theaters on July 26.
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