Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman took over Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Wednesday night ahead of Deadpool & Wolverine hitting theaters — and there was no shortage of jokes and even a bit of news about the film.
The first segment of the show saw the co-stars give a 13-minute opening monologue before transitioning into interviewing each other on the show. While being interviewed, Reynolds, who also served as a producer and writer on the film, revealed Deadpool & Wolverine was originally supposed to be titled Deadpool & Friend.
But the night before they released the first full trailer on Super Bowl Sunday, the title leaked because of “the son of bitches on the internet,” Reynolds said, and people “fucking hated that title.”
“We were not feeling so good about that anymore, and it went with the trailer that we were showing. It was kind of a perfect title for the first piece of materials we had out there,” he continued, “So, Shawn Levy — director extraordinaire, friend to both of us and dear friend, literally one of our best friends in the whole world — he and I had been sitting in the edit room for months at this point, and we called everybody at Disney and Marvel and said we have to change the title, and they were like, ‘Well no guys. It launches tomorrow.’”
After the frequent collaborators insisted they did not want to release the film with that title, Disney caved and made it work from one day to the next.
While the Free Guy star and producer admitted to Jackman that he enjoys writing, he struggled to write for his iconic character, Wolverine.
“One of the scariest things I’ve ever done in my life is writing for you,” Reynolds noted. “Well, Wolverine, you’ve got a legacy there that is really, I mean, one of the most, I think, one of the most iconic legacies in all comic book movies.”
Throughout the show, the men took several, playful jabs at each other but also had a few genuinely heartfelt moments where they discussed their experiences working together. They also interviewed their co-star Emma Corrin.
“You’re one of one, my friend,” Jackman told Reynolds toward the end of interviewing him, to which The Adam Project star responded: “A front-row seat to Hugh Jackman is the greatest gift on earth. I mean it. I hug him, and I become 20 percent better of a person. What you see is what you get here,” adding that’s not typically the case with people in Hollywood.
When Reynolds interviewed Jackman, the two recalled meeting on the set of X-Men Origins: Wolverine and The Greatest Showman star joked that he didn’t talk to his now-friend because he wasn’t famous yet. Reynolds also jokingly asked Jackman how it feels to know that everyone knows he’s a liar since he said he had retired the role of Wolverine after Logan but then came back to it for Deadpool & Wolverine.
The Lés Miserables actor admitted it was “terrifying” to return to the clawed superhero for the movie because he was really proud of how Logan ended and thought they had stuck the landing.
“But the honest truth is three days after announcing [I was retiring Wolverine], I saw Deadpool one in the cinema, I was like, ‘Oops,’ because I could just see it,” he shared. “I’ve never had more fun playing the character.”
Reynolds echoed the sentiment, saying the film is “the most special experience I’ve ever had in my life. … I genuinely had the best time in my entire life, and I actually don’t know how I’m ever supposed to go do another film ever again without you.”
During their opening monologue, the actors talked about their naughty Wolverine popcorn bucket that “people are really gonna fuck”; admitted how they “cannot wait” for audiences to see the film that people are saying could save the Marvel Cinematic Universe but joked it couldn’t save democracy because “democracy’s dead”; and took questions from children on the street.
When a child was shown headshots of the two men, he asked who they were, and Jackman jokingly took that a little personally: “I’m the guy whose Walk of Fame star you’re standing on, you little shit.”
As for Reynolds, he took a second to answer the question in the most dramatically silly way, saying, “Who are we? We’re the outgrowth of severe childhood trauma, who have toiled away in this vapid, morally bankrupt industry for the past 25 years, and now we have enough money to get away with literally anything. We could buy your childhood home and burn it to the ground. You think Jimmy Kimmel is really on vacation? He’s dead. We killed him. You got it?”
Deadpool & Wolverine hits theaters Friday.
