Sir Patrick Stewart has been stepping back into the spotlight lately, especially with the fast-approaching premiere of his new Star Trek series Picard.
In recent years, he’s been reprising some of his most iconic roles, having returned to the X-Men saga in Logan to give Professor Xavier a babbling, emotional ending. It’d been three years since his previous screen portrayal of the character in X-Men: Days of Future Past and now, three years out from Logan, Stewart’s revealed that he’s had discussions with Marvel Studios’ president Kevin Feige about the role.
Since Disney’s purchase of 20th Century Fox, the studio has been given the opportunity to revitalize some of the Fox Marvel properties and the iconic actor confirmed in a recent interview that he and Feige touched on the topic of Professor X when they chatted.
“I met with Kevin Feige a couple of months ago and we had long, long conversations,” said Stewart. “And there have been moves and suggestions, which include Charles Xavier.”
Despite these maneuvers, the actor confessed that he has personal reasons for shunning such a return to the X-Men franchise. In his eyes, from the standpoint of acting, he’d not abandoned Xavier but had laid him to rest in Logan. And sitting and watching the events unravel in that film was a deeply evocative experience for Stewart.
“If we had not made Logan, then yes, I would probably be ready to get into that wheelchair one more time and be Charles Xavier…but Logan changed all that. Here’s a tiny anecdote. The first time that Hugh and I saw the film in public was at the Berlin Film Festival, which is where the movie premiered. Shortly after Xavier’s death scene, I found myself getting very emotional but I had to keep a hold of myself because we were sitting in the middle of this cinema.
We were moved by the story. We were moved by one another. We were moved by the movie. But we also both made the decision that we were saying goodbye to our characters as well. In that sense, it was not just the deaths of those two men in the franchise, but it was also goodbye to our part in them as well.”
Who can blame the guy? Logan got all the fans emotional. While it’s certainly disappointing to hear of Stewart turning down a possible return to the Marvel saga on account of James Mangold’s pic, the movie also served as a source of renewed inspiration for the actor.
As he’s explained before, the experience of returning as Xavier in Logan influenced him in his reprisal of his long-abandoned Star Trek character Jean-Luc Picard, best remembered for his leading position in The Next Generation series. Speaking of which, Star Trek: Picard is set to premiere on January 23rd via CBS All Access. And the X-Men, meanwhile, will soon be rebooted under the Marvel Studios banner.
