Ryan Reynolds Hid His Secret ‘Deadpool 2’ Role From Cast

Deadpool 2 featured an A-list role so secret that even the character’s scene partners didn’t know ahead of time.

No, it wasn’t that Brad Pitt cameo. It was Ryan Reynolds’ role as the Juggernaut.

“I didn’t know who was going to be doing the voice of Juggernaut,” recalls Stefan Kapicic, who plays X-Men veteran Colossus in the film.

Then one day during postproduction on the film’s Vancouver set, Kapicic got into his mocap suit, and was surprised to see Reynolds there, also putting on mocap gear.

“Ryan is always there when I’m working on Colossus, helping me with the lines and giving me ideas,” Kapicic says. “Then I saw Ryan getting into the CGI costume, and I’m like, ‘What’s going on, man? Did I miss something?'”

It turned out that in addition to playing Deadpool, Reynolds stepped into the metal boots of Juggernaut, the unstoppable bad guy who fights Colossus in the third act of the film. The star provided the voice and facial performance capture to bring the character to life. As director David Leitch has explained, stuntmen filled in for the Juggernaut during principal photography on set, wearing gray suits as reference points for the animators. (The actual character is CGI, so the stunt performers did not wear mocap suits.)

Deadpool 2 went on to earn $732 million worldwide, and also spawned the “Super Duper $@%!#& Cut” that adds 15 minutes to the film for its home entertainment release, out on digital Tuesday and hitting Blu-ray on Aug. 21. For Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld, those extra minutes help restore balance to the world, as they include moments he saw on set that he was surprised not to see in the theatrical cut.

“When they showed me the movie, I said, ‘Hey, what happened to that scene? Why isn’t that scene in the movie?'” Liefeld recalls, specifically pointing to the abridged bathhouse scene early in the film. “David was really confident. He goes, ‘The pace of the movie we want to deliver works better with these action and humor scenes out of it.’ I said, ‘I will trust in you guys.'”

Next up for the Deadpool universe is the team-up movie X-Force, starring Reynolds and Josh Brolin as Cable. Liefeld has not yet gotten a chance to speak with director Drew Goddard about the project, as he has been busy completing his next film, Bad Times at the El Royale, which began shooting at the same space vacated by Deadpool 2 when it completed production. While Liefeld is looking forward to his creation X-Force having its own movie, he’s also pleased that DC’s upcoming Titans TV show is featuring Hawk and Dove, characters he worked on in the late ’80s when he was an untested artist.

“The success of that miniseries launched me. Hawk & Dove got me hired on New Mutants,” he says. “Without Dove, there is no Deadpool and Cable. It’s all linked in my life.”

As for Kapicic, he does not know if Colossus will appear in X-Force, but this is unlikely to be the end of the line for the character. But it may be hard to top that fight with the Juggernaut.

“I got the chance to say, ‘Pick on someone your own size,'” he says with a smile.

For more from Deadpool 2‘s home entertainment release, read our interview with Ryan Reynolds, who discusses the joke over which he was willing to go to war with the MPAA.