The Real Story Behind Brad Pitt’s Deadpool 2 Cameo

Even though every single one of them was played for laughs, Deadpool 2 contained so many cameos from various superheroes and A-list actors that it put the Marvel Cinematic Universe to shame.

As well as the fantastic moment where James McAvoy and his entire X-Men team show up without Deadpool even realizing, Alan Tudyk and Matt Damon also appear buried under heavy makeup as two rednecks that Cable encounters early in his journey. Despite Fox building towards their own X-Force movie at the time Deadpool 2 was released, the Merc with a Mouth still took the concept and turned it upside down by bringing in some recognizable faces to play the team and then killing them off before they could even start their first mission.

Rob Delaney’s decidedly ordinary Peter may have captured the hearts of audiences around the world, but the rest of X-Force was made up of some heavy hitters in their own right. Terry Crews’ Bedlam was glimpsed alongside Into the Badlands’ Lewis Tan as Shatterstar and It’s breakout star Bill Skarsgard as Zeitgeist, but the biggest name of the bunch was only seen on screen for a brief second or two.

Brad Pitt’s cameo as Vanisher came completely out of the blue and generated one of the biggest laughs in the movie, and it turns out the actor didn’t take a lot of convincing to sign on. Once it was decided that they wanted a major star for the role, Reynolds reached out to Pitt and he agreed instantly based on how much his kids loved the first Deadpool movie.

As ScreenRant explains:

Brad Pitt could have joined Deadpool 2 in a different role as he was considered to play Cable, but couldn’t commit due to scheduling conflicts. Vanisher was originally never seen in the film, but as the script evolved, the creative team behind the film thought that Vanisher getting tangled up was the perfect moment for a celebrity cameo, and decided to approach “the hardest get in Hollywood”. Ryan Reynolds then pitched the idea to Brad Pitt, whose children loved the first Deadpool film, and so he agreed to appear. According to Deadpool 2 co-writer Rhett Reese, Pitt agreed to play Vanisher (whose actual appearance lasts less than two seconds) “in return for scale, which is a very, very low number, a low low salary, and a cup of coffee”, delivered to him by Ryan Reynolds.

It also must have helped that he had plenty of history with director David Leitch, who had previously spent years working as Pitt’s stunt double in the likes of Fight Club, Ocean’s Eleven, Troy and Mr. and Mrs. Smith, but even then it still came as a massive surprise for fans that one of the biggest movie stars in the world would show up in something like Deadpool 2 for the sole purpose of making one visual gag and then never being seen or heard from again.