Hugh Jackman's First Full Wolverine Interview

On Gambit...

Interview by Jonathan Dean

"Gambit is in the film. When we showed footage at Comic-Con the place just went mental. He’s played by Taylor Kitsch who does a great, great job.

He’s a little more showy than Wolverine, but there’s a similarity. They’re outsiders, they’re wise-cracking, they’re anti-authority.

In this movie Gambit plays the role a little bit like Wolverine did in the first X-Men. He’s not part of any group, he’s not on anybody’s side. Wolverine gets him because he needs the information off him, but Gambit’s not going to give it – not without a fight. And they get a fight, the two of them get a fight. I’m really, really happy with the dynamic between the two.

I quite liked Pyro in X-Men 2. I really loved that kind of relationship, because he turns to the dark side in a way. I always feel when I was acting that Wolverine could see a lot of himself in Pyro, y’know? The loose cannon.

And just a little aggressive, a little badass really and it’s the same with Gambit. Gambit’s got a little bit of that. A little showy, a little flashy, arrogant, so kind of Wolverine… They have a dynamic where they love giving each other shit. There’s some good stuff in there."

On Deadpool...

"And then Deadpool. I have to be very careful how I talk about Deadpool, because it’s something I’m really excited about in the movie, where it plays and how it plays. I just can’t think right now how I can tell you about it without giving away some really cool ideas!

That’s where David Benioff was really smart, how coolly he brought that character in.

The things I’m thinking about now I don’t want to tell you because the fans will go “Awwww, that’s cool”… Actually some fans might be pissed off but that’s ok. I think they’ll understand why we did it. We took some creative licenses with him."

On continuing the franchise...

"I’ve always harboured the Japanese story [Chris Claremont and Frank Miller's version of Wolverine].

When I was doing X-Men I was obsessed with reading the Japanese story. It gave me a lot of great inspiration for the character and I’ve forever been banging onto people about that.

It’s the coolest – and can you imagine visually? I can see the comedy of him training with the Samurai. I can just see it working.


So I love playing Wolverine, but if it becomes clears to me we’re doing something that the people have had enough of or if they want someone else to play him… Whatever. I’m not the kind of person to doggedly hold on.

So right now we’ve got to set up a character, the origin. So everyone at the end of that movie has to go, “Yes! Wolverine!” And it’s actually answered a couple of questions I’ve never had answered before in the comics and you go, “I get him. Now where can we take him?”

What adventures can that character go on now that we know him?"

On fan reaction to the new trailer...

"There’s a shot in the trailer that I had in my head… It comes out on 12 December.

There’s a shot I had in my head of the character coming out of the water from a tank. I wanted the fans to be in the tank.

I don’t if there’s a nice way of saying it, I wanted the fans in the cinema – Vinnie from the café in Tribeca and the customs guy I met in London and the ones with the Wolverine tattoos – to go “Fucking yeah!”.

I want them to yell. While I was shooting I was screaming at the top of my voice, “Raaaahhhhh!” That’s what I had in my head how people would see it.

There’s a shot in my head and you’ll see me coming out in slow motion and you see veins and all that and there’s no CGI. I’m so happy because I saw that and I went “That’s it!” That’s the movie and that’s the Wolverine I wanted to make for those guys. "

On making Wolverine an iconic movie character...

"I’d had a really good go in X-Men 1,2,3, I mean Wolverine got quite a lot of screen time, you got to know a fair bit about it but I still felt there was a hell of a lot of mystery to him.

By that point I’d read so many of the comics and there were so many of these amazing sagas – Japanese Saga, the different sagas – and I thought each one of those could make an amazing movie.

There’s so much inherent in that character that makes him the perfect antihero for a film, the reluctant hero. That’s the Dirty Harry, Mad Max, Indiana Jones to a certain degree. It’s those classic screen archetypes."

For more on X-men Origins: Wolverine, take a look at our Wolverine film page and our trailer breakdown from the recently removed YouTube bootleg .