“For an actor, it’s just jam on your bread to have a role which is the same man underneath but dramatically transformed by illness, by fear, by loneliness, by desperation and by a horrible black humor that he possesses,” Patrick Stewart says of playing X-Men founder Charles Xavier in 2oth Century Fox and Marvel’s Logan.
Back as the world’s most powerful telepath in the hit James Mangold-helmed film, Stewart was speaking onstage at the DGA Theater this month during Deadline’s The Contenders awards-season event.
Set in a not so distant future that will seem familiar in many ways, the R-rated Logan finds Hugh Jackman’s once-fierce Wolverine, aka Logan, moonlighting as soused limo driver. With many of the other X-Men dead, Logan nurses Xavier, who is impaired by seizures that use his mutant powers against those closest to him. The introduction of a young mutant into the duo’s desolate lives and their companion Caliban (Stephen Merchant) sees the tarnished heroes lurched into one last journey for survival. Mangold, Scott Frank and Michael Green penned the script.
Released on March 3, the third and perhaps final Wolverine stand-alone movie has made more than $616 million at the box office globally. This week, Logan was named one of the top 10 movies of 2017 by the National Board of Review.
Click on the video above to see my conversation with Stewart and Mangold.
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