Daniel Radcliffe denies rumors that he got buff to play Wolverine

It’s time to update your X-Men dream cast: Daniel Radcliffe has heard the rumors and he wholly denies them.

During a Vanity Fair lie detector interview with his Merrily We Roll Along costars Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez, Radcliffe confronted the internet rumors mill in all its horror. Most notably responding to hopeful fans expecting him to don spandex and retractable claws as the next Wolverine. While Radcliffe has long been a popular fancast to replace Hugh Jackman in the role, speculation ran rampant after he showed off his muscles in the season 4 finale of Miracle Workers earlier this year.

“No,” Radcliffe confirmed, he did not start the rumor. When asked if he just decided to get buff for no reason, Radcliffe laughed: “Yes. I got buff because I am obsessive, and I want to… You’ve seen my parents, they’re like insane fitness people,” he said. “So that’s just been passed on. But no. No Wolverine. Flattered, but no.”

Earlier in the conversation, Radcliffe confirmed that he has, on occasion, googled himself. When Groff pressed for the weirdest story that the Harry Potter alum has read, Radcliffe had a list of rumors prepared.

“There’s a lot of shipping of Harry and Draco [Malfoy] as characters together,” he told his castmates. “So I’ve read some of that.”

Radcliffe continued, “What’s the weirdest story that I’ve read about myself? That I had the [UK Special Air Service] walk my dogs. That I had special beer brewed for myself by monks in a monastery in Belgium. That I used to get my assistant to hold my scripts in the mirror so I could read it while I was having makeup done — even though that doesn’t make f—ing sense because I wouldn’t be able to read mirror writing. There’s a long list.”

Let the record also show that Radcliffe paused the questioning to explain the concept of “shipping” to Groff, who seemed genuinely flummoxed. As the former star of a multi-billion dollar franchise, Radcliffe is all too familiar with the term.

As for the future of Wolverine, Jackman is set to reprise the role in Deadpool 3, after originally retiring the mutant in 2017’s Logan. In typical Marvel fashion, the rest remains a mystery. The X-Men have yet to be officially introduced into the Marvel Cinematic Universe since Disney acquired Fox, but the door remains wide open.

“The question is how to do it and when to do it,” Marvel mastermind Kevin Feige told EW earlier this year. “That’s something we’ve been working on for years. Now we know. But we’re not going to talk about it.”

You can watch the full Lie Detector interview with Radcliffe, Groff, and Mendez above.

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