Ryan Reynolds and Andrew Garfield Interview Each Other for Variety, and the Marvel Reveals Are Fascinating

Ryan Reynolds and Andrew Garfield sat down to interview each other for Variety's Actor on Actor series, and the full conversation runs about 45 minutes. I want to focus on the parts where they talk about the future of Deadpool and Wolverine and Spider-Man, because there is a lot here for Marvel fans to dig into.

The interview opens with Reynolds gushing over Garfield, telling him "you can do no wrong in our house" and praising his dedication to his craft. Garfield can only respond with "ditto," which I love because he literally cannot say it back, he just has to ditto it.

Ryan Reynolds Explains Why Deadpool Works Best Through "Scarcity and Surprise"

When Garfield asks what the future holds for Deadpool and Wolverine, Reynolds lays out his philosophy for the character. He says the character works well in two ways, one being scarcity and surprise, noting it had been six years since the last Deadpool movie. He explains that making one of these films "swallows my whole life," saying "there's no, you can't take your hand off the stick all the way through development through post-production into marketing and promo." With four kids at home, he says he never wants to be absentee or miss the moments when he sees their faces after a sports thing or competition. He adds, "I don't know what the future of Deadpool will be, but I do know that Shawn and I made the movie to have a beginning, a middle, and an end and be a complete experience instead of a commercial for another one."

I think that answer is pretty vague, but I believe he is basically telling us Deadpool is going to pop up in other movies, which we are honestly expecting at this point. Obviously Avengers Doomsday, obviously Avengers Secret Wars, and there have been rumors about an X-Men movie thrown in somewhere, maybe an Avengers versus X-Men storyline. If there is a movie for that outside of Doomsday and Secret Wars, I am sure he will show up in it, but I think the next time we see him is Doomsday, then Secret Wars, and then I think we get a Deadpool and Wolverine 2. Given it has already been six years since the last one, I would guess another four, five, or six years could pass before that sequel arrives.

Reynolds Reveals He Pitched Marvel Over 20 Versions of Deadpool and Wolverine, Including a Rashomon-Style Take

Reynolds says his very first pitch to Marvel and Kevin Feige, five years ago, was a Deadpool and Wolverine movie told in Rashomon style, showing Wolverine's perspective versus his own and then an objective view. When that was not what Marvel wanted, he says he pitched "the most idiotic movie," including a no-special-effects, no-conflict Sundance-style film built around a four-minute long take meant to feel raw and vulnerable. He also pitched a two-hander with himself and the hunter who shot Bambi's mother, to which Marvel's answer was simply, "we don't touch Bambi." Reynolds says it took about a year and a half of "tap dancing" before Hugh Jackman called and said he wanted to come back and do it.

I remember hearing a leak a while back that the first plot idea for Deadpool and Wolverine was a Rashomon-style movie with two different perspectives. It turns out that leak was accurate, since Reynolds confirms he actually pitched that. I am glad Jackman called, because I would not have wanted a Sundance-style, no-special-effects Deadpool movie.

Reynolds Sees Deadpool as a Supporting Character and Name Drops a Possible Channing Tatum Gambit Movie

Reynolds says he sees Deadpool as a supporting character much more than a lead, explaining that centering him requires taking everything away and making him the underdog, which the Deadpool movies already do. He says, "if he comes back it's going to be in someone else's movie, Channing Tatum, so excited to Gambit, and I would happily be the fifth banana in his movie or anyone else's." He then praises how No Way Home wove together generations of Spider-Man, comparing the difficulty of landing that kind of redemption story to "being in an airplane trying to hit a bullseye from in the Grand Canyon." He also describes one of the best feelings he has had as sitting in Hall H at Comic-Con watching Wesley Snipes cross the frame while people cried, realizing they had missed characters like Blade, Electra, and Gambit without knowing it.

This stood out to me because Reynolds has previously said Marvel Studios is obsessed with Channing Tatum's Gambit, and here he explicitly floats Deadpool showing up in a Gambit movie. I would not be surprised if Marvel Studios is actively talking about making that happen, though I think it would come after Avengers Secret Wars since I do not see room for it anywhere else in the rest of the Multiverse Saga.

Andrew Garfield Says Being Welcomed Back for No Way Home Felt Like "Being Invited to the Party"

Garfield tells Reynolds that coming back for No Way Home, after Amy Pascal reached out to him about it, felt like being welcomed back into the party, adding that it could finally be a party because Deadpool being more of an adjacent, scarce character meant there was something soothing about the looser setup this time. He jokes that the plan all along was to undermine the whole process once he got invited back, comparing it to sneaking into a prison situation, which Reynolds finds hilariously random.

I really appreciated Reynolds taking the time to praise Garfield's work as The Amazing Spider-Man. I think Garfield was genuinely great in that role, and it just took Marvel Studios getting the formula right before he could return alongside Tobey Maguire.

Andrew Garfield Opens Up About the Years of "Soul Work" He Did After Amazing Spider-Man Ended

Garfield describes his return to the role as "just very gratifying," comparing the abrupt end of his Amazing Spider-Man run to a party that ended prematurely. He says that afterward he had to reckon with being uninvited to that party, and that is when the real internal work began, dealing with his own relationship to self, to perception, to validation, and to inclusion or exclusion. He says it took a few years of that kind of reflection, and in retrospect he is grateful for it. He reveals that one of the first photos of him as a three-year-old is in a Spider-Man costume his mother made out of felt, calling the connection to the character primal and saying, "this character, it means so much to me."

I really feel for him here, because the plan at the time was for an Amazing Spider-Man 3, and Amy Pascal met with Kevin Feige to get help making that movie happen, only for Feige to say it was not going to work and that Spider-Man needed to come into the MCU instead. I could probably listen to a whole interview of Garfield talking about how he felt getting that call that Amazing Spider-Man 3 was not happening, so I am glad he was able to heal from that and eventually come back.

Garfield Calls Being Part of a "Spider-Man Support Group" in No Way Home a Genuinely Beautiful Experience

Garfield says it was a beautiful thing to genuinely feel like a support to his fellow Spider-Man actors, calling it a real spider brotherhood. He praises director Jon Watts for being loose and relaxed on set, recalling that when he asked what they were going to do about the script, Watts would simply say they would work on it through improvisation. Garfield describes this as an opportunity no one had ever had, to build a Spider-Man support group dynamic from the ground up and figure out what that could look like specific to these particular Spider-people.

I love this because the dynamic between the three Spider-Man actors in the movie really was fantastic, and I think a lot of that came from real feelings, since they knew how important it was to have generations of Spider-Man on screen together. I think the fact that they were able to improvise so much on the spot probably led to a lot of the amazing scenes we ended up getting.

What This All Means for Deadpool and Spider-Man Going Forward

Based on everything said in this interview, I think Deadpool and Wolverine gets a sequel, and I think we definitely see Deadpool show up in Avengers Doomsday and Avengers Secret Wars. It also sounds like he could turn up in other movies too, especially since Kevin Feige has teased more X-Men appearances across the Multiverse Saga. As for Andrew Garfield, I really hope he is not done with Spider-Man and gets to return again. But it is nice knowing that even if this is where his Spider-Man story ends, he already found his own healing and got the redemption he was looking for after everything that happened with the Amazing Spider-Man 3 cancellation.

Do you think Deadpool ends up in a Channing Tatum Gambit movie down the line, and are you hoping Andrew Garfield gets another shot at Spider-Man in the MCU?