Aaron Stanford last played Pyro in 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand, so it’s safe to say that he didn’t expect Marvel to come calling nearly 20 years later for Deadpool and Wolverine.
The actor, 47, said the process started with vague phone calls from Marvel Studios. “It progressed to ‘Shawn Levy wants to get on the phone with you,’ and I knew he was directing Deadpool, so figured it out,” Stanford exclusively told Us Weekly. “He confirmed it and said ‘Yeah, we wanna bring Pyro back.’ That sounded great. I said yes.”
But Stanford didn’t immediately start fantasizing about what his next action figure would look like. “The experience for me was not one of immediate elation because that’s just not how I think and not how I work,” the 12 Monkeys alum explained. “My immediate thought was, like, How is this gonna turn sour? How is this gonna go bad? This sounds really fun, this could be a really great gig, so how does the rug get pulled out from under me?’ But it didn’t — and it turned out to be great!”
Stanford’s caution comes from decades in Hollywood, and that also made for a much less stressful filming process.
“When I first did the X-Men movies, that was at the very beginning of my career and I really hadn’t done very much prior to that. What I had done was very low budget — very, very small indie movies, I was doing theater in New York City. So to step into a production on that scale and to be suddenly working with Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart and being on set with with Brian Cox playing Striker — they had all the all the heavy hitters possible and enormous movie stars as well. So really, really intimidating.”
He continued, “I was scared a lot of time. So what’s great is being able to [return] 20 years later — having had a career that entire time, having worked that entire time on productions of all different levels — I was able to come back and and do this movie and really enjoy it. [I was able to] feel like I belong there and really be able to experience it on that level as opposed to just, like, showing up to set every day convinced that I was gonna screw it up in some horrible way.”
He isn’t the only one who has changed. When Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) and Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) meet Pyro after exploring the multiverse in the new film, which hit theaters on Friday, July 26, he’s clearly not the teen mutant who was defeated in 2006.
“He’s been through the ringer. He’s the same character from the old X-Men movies, but he has been ripped from his own world and thrown into this weird desert apocalypse world,” Stanford said of Pyro. “Physically, he’s broken down. His teeth are a wreck, and he’s just a guy who’s clearly come a long way. He’s gone down a very long, dark road since we’ve seen him last.”
It’s hard for Stanford to say much about his story without spoilers, but he was happy to finally share the film with his loved ones at the New York City premiere on Monday, July 22. “I went with my partner, Laura, and I brought a really old friend of mine from college to see it as well,” he shared. “Yeah, it was great to have some people who were close to me experiencing it along with me.”
Though he doesn’t love watching himself on the big screen, comparing it to hearing your own voice on an answering machine, the actor said Deadpool and Wolverine was “really fun to shoot and I’m happy with the results.”
He’d be happy to return as Pyro again. “Sure, it’s a great time,” he said. “I’ve been with the character for so long at this point, to be able to essentially start my career with the character and now be at this phase of my career and revisit it — I’d love to see him live on.”
Stanford added, “Who knows? It’s the multiverse, so anything can happen.”
With any luck, Marvel won’t wait 18 years to bring him back again.
Deadpool and Wolverine is in theaters now.
