On an amazing adventure
Canadian-American actor Ryan Reynolds appeared in films such as 'National Lampoon's Van Wilder', 'The Proposal', 'Green Lantern' among other movies. However, he shot to global fame in 2016 with his titular role in 'Deadpool'. The film received critical and commercial acclaim and set numerous records at the time of its release for an R-rated comedy. For his performance, Reynolds received numerous accolades, including nominations for the Critics' Choice Movie Awards and the Golden Globe Awards. He reprised the role in 'Deadpool 2', which even a bigger hit.
Reynolds is in the titular role in the film 'Pokémon: Detective Pikachu', which is running in theatres. The movie is a live-action film adaptation of the 'Detective Pikachu' video game. Reynolds voiced and was the facial motion capture actor for, the CGI detective Pikachu.
Your movie 'Detective Pikachu' just released, what did you love most about the movie and what is it about?
'Detective Pikachu' takes place in Ryme City and he is unravelling a mystery. There's another young guy called Justice Smith, who is a phenomenal actor and these two find each other. Both of them are looking for something; trying to unravel a mystery. So, the movie is about that. I just love it because news these days is like pouring piping hot lemon juice into your eyeballs. This just feels like a nice amazing adventure that just sweeps you away for a couple of hours.
Out of your friends and family, which character do they have more fun hearing your voice coming out of - Pikachu or Deadpool?
Well, Pokémon characters are for whatever reason, are like actual catnip for children. They do that thing where they send their test models to see if the voice can be animated with the character's face. They sent it to me, I opened it on my laptop and my kid walks by and says, "That is uh-mazing". So that's kind of what happened, and I was just in. I didn't know a lot about it, I had to learn everything fast.
Surely your kids must have loved watching this movie, but have they been able to see anything else?
Well, they will never see 'Deadpool'. They have been on set a ton but even then, I can't spend time with them because I have the scar make-up on so as soon as they see that they just run. I know they will be re-enacting this with sock puppets with a therapist in 28 years, so we've decided to just keep them away from set when I am in the scar make-up (laughs).
We have never seen something this audacious and self-referential as Deadpool. We know this is a passion project for you so can you give a little context for how long this has been in the works?
It's 11 years I have been trying to get the 'Deadpool' movie made so come hell or high water we actually did it. I always liked it to be the single worst relationship I have ever been in since we are on and off again, sleeping together and eventually we got married. But it was rough going there for a while, the movie is probably one of the most unorthodox superheroes you could ever have because you have a protagonist in this movie that's morally flexible. He is not necessarily the best guy in the world he is not the worst guy in the world either so he is governed by his own whim and on the road to getting this movie made, Fox, they have the X-Men franchise and Deadpool obviously lives within that franchise and they also call the X-Men franchise over at Fox "cha-ching" so they didn't necessarily want Deadpool as like a disruptive force to enter that whole world because they didn't know exactly how to handle it so long story short we did some test footage that leaked on the internet and this is probably one of the first fan engineered film to ever hit the big screen. Deadpool fans just flooded fox with tweets, hate mails and everything they can think of to get this movie made and they gave us a green light so here we are.
Watch Ryan Reynolds in 'Deadpool 2' on May 19 at 1 pm and 9 pm on Star Movies.