Wesley Snipes Discusses His Return as Blade
Warning: This article includes Deadpool & Wolverine spoilers.
When Marvel Studios brought the cast of Deadpool & Wolverine on stage at San Diego Comic-Con last weekend, Wesley Snipes received a hero’s welcome.
Snipes, of course, portrayed the Daywalker/vampire hunter Blade in a series of movies released between 1998 and 2004. Predating both the Fox X-Men franchise and the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), in many ways, Blade was a forerunner for what would come.
In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Snipes revealed that while he had some conversations about playing Blade again over the years, he thought his time playing the character had come to an end.
“Over the years, we’ve had very interesting conversations, some of them very substantive and some of them not,” he said.
“So I kind of resided that I was moving on from them, which is okay. I did three of them, and I thought they turned out pretty good. Not so bad… So we move on to other things, and bigger and better things, as well.”
Enter Ryan Reynolds
Then, Snipes got a call from his Blade Trinity co-star Ryan Reynolds.
“I thought it didn’t make sense to me, but [when] you get a call from Ryan Reynolds out of the blue after 20 years, you go, ‘Okay, I got to take this call. Let’s see what this is about,'” Snipes recalled. “He told me the idea… They said ‘yes’ and ‘it’s a go.’ ‘If you’re in, we’re in.’ Here we are.”
In Deadpool & Wolverine, Snipes’ Blade finds himself in the Void. Eventually teaming up with the titular heroes, Blade is instrumental in stopping Cassandra Nova’s reign of terror and getting Deadpool and Wolverine home.
A return as Blade seemed especially unlikely to Snipes, as Marvel currently has a reboot of the franchise (which will star Mahershala Ali) on the way.
“I did not think it was possible,” Snipes recalls. “I didn’t think we would be able to pull it off. I didn’t think that Marvel was into it, Disney was into it — also because they had Mahershala cast for the next upcoming version of it.
Originally announced in 2019, Ali’s Blade has since had a disastrous production. Still, Marvel seems committed to the project.
Snipes Managed To Keep His Return a Surprise
While Snipes admitted that keeping his Deadpool & Wolverine cameo under wraps was difficult, the actor says that getting back in “Blade shape” was the more challenging task.
“I wasn’t Blade ready, man. I don’t walk around as Blade every day, you know what I mean? With a trench coat and shades and fangs in my mouth. We had to work out,” he says. “We definitely had to get the body, and my biggest concern was being in condition enough to deal with whatever the action was. They didn’t really tell me what the action was going to be, so I prepared for whatever that was going to come,” he explained.
“Thankfully, I didn’t have to do as much as I thought I would because the action movies are tough. They’re not easy at all by any means. About a month into it, I got the body right… and then, with the help of a little customized foam well placed in certain areas, it was all good to go, baby. Let’s ride!”
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