‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’ star threw scoopers off the scent by telling everyone they were playing MODOK

On any given day, the internet is awash with rumors surrounding every high-profile comic book project in development, but Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 wasn’t quite subjected to the same treatment, largely down to the fact that writer and director James Gunn has made it his mission to debunk as much unfounded hearsay as possible.

Scooper culture has become an increasingly loud part of the superhero discourse, but you’ve got to be 100 percent correct when peddling scuttlebutt about a Gunn project, because his itchy Twitter finger is rarely kept in its holster. With that in mind, Vol. 3 star Nico Santos opted to take a different route instead, by opting to tell everyone he was playing a completely different character.

The actor makes quite the impression as the High Evolutionary’s right-hand man Theel, but as he revealed to ComicBook, he thought it would be much funnier to “confirm” to everyone that he was playing M.O.D.O.K. instead.

“Oh, my god. I think the funniest for me was back when I was still on Twitter land, where somebody was like, ‘Is he playing MODOK?’ I just answered, ‘Yes, I’m playing MODOK.’ Because they can just say they don’t have to CGI me because I already look like MODOK, and I have the same size head and body. But I just kept telling people, people kept having these theories of who I was going to play. I just kept telling people that I was going to be playing Groot’s gay Uncle Fruit, to just keep them quiet. I’m just like, ‘Stop starting to speculate. You know I’m not going to tell you who I’m playing.'”

Of course, his plans were blown apart in February when Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania debuted with Corey Stoll playing the balloon-headed villain, but it must have been fun while it lasted. In the grand scheme of things, Teel isn’t going to go down in the annals of Marvel Cinematic Universe history, but at least Santos enjoyed steering the speculation away from his identity.