“When I was playing Ajax,” continues Skrein, “he thinks he’s a hero, he thinks he’s saving people. He thinks he’s helping Wade Wilson by turning him into Deadpool. I’m going to play him as a hero, and Frank Martin as a villain.” Skrein does admit though that nothing is ever quite that simple.
With Transporter, and Game of Thrones, which Skrein featured in for a few episodes, he was not familiar with the product before getting the part. Deadpool, however, is another story.
“I’ve always been a Marvel fan, always been a Deadpool fan,” he professes. “I collected X-Men: Age of Apocalypse, Spawn (that was my favourite), Violator, Gambit. That helped me with Deadpool, I knew that world, and subsequently I bought every single issue.”
While on his press tour, Skrein admits to constantly trying to pick up new issues to add to his collection. He has also become fully aware that Marvel comics have a huge, passionate, and at times particular fan base that will be both eager to see the film and quick to compare and contrast
“The main thing is to respect the fans, respect what they expect” he says. “But you have to have artistic license to be creative. You can’t be thinking about the fans when you’re actually there. You can think about them before, conceptualizing the character and what not, but after that you just got to go step in and live.”
“Real human emotion is always interesting, “he concludes. “You let the chains go, leave the graphic novels behind or the previous series, and just concentrate on your scene.”
That concludes our interview, but be sure to check out The Transporter Refueled when it hits theatres on September 3rd.