“I got buff because I am obsessive, and I want to…” says Daniel Radcliffe
There’s been a lot of fan speculation about 34-year-old Daniel Radcliffe hitting the gym to transform himself into the next Wolverine for the X-Men series. The Harry Potter actor has noticed his name trending and has addressed the rumors about him in a recent interview with Vanity Fair.
After having Marvel enthusiasts fan-cast him as Hugh Jackman’s replacement as the Wolverine, the rumors conjured up even more steam when Daniel Radcliffe flaunted his muscular physique in the season four finale of Miracle Workers earlier this year.
In a lie detector interview with his Merrily We Roll Along co-stars Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez, Radcliffe finally confronted the widespread internet rumors.
Radcliffe confirmed he didn’t start the rumor by simply stating, “No.”
When he was asked if he decided to get buff for no reason at all, Radcliffe laughed and replied, “Yes. I got buff because I am obsessive, and I want to… You’ve seen my parents, they’re like insane fitness people. So that’s just been passed on. But no. No Wolverine. Flattered, but no.”
Earlier in the interview, the What If? actor confessed to occasionally searching for himself online. When Groff inquired about the most peculiar story he’d come across, Radcliffe was ready with a list of rumors.
“There’s a lot of shipping of Harry and Draco [Malfoy] as characters together,” Radcliffe said. “So I’ve read some of that.”
Radcliffe continued, “What’s the weirdest story that I’ve read about myself? That I had the [UK Special Air Service] walk my dogs. That I had special beer brewed for myself by monks in a monastery in Belgium. That I used to get my assistant to hold my scripts in the mirror so I could read it while I was having makeup done — even though that doesn’t make f—ing sense because I wouldn’t be able to read mirror writing. There’s a long list.”
Migrating back to the subject of the X-Men series and who will be playing the next Wolverine, Hugh Jackman is scheduled to make a return to the role in Deadpool 3, despite originally retiring the character in 2017’s Logan.
The official introduction of X-Men into the Marvel Cinematic Universe has yet to happen since Disney’s acquisition of Fox, but the possibilities remain unexplored.
“The question is how to do it and when to do it,” Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios told EW earlier this year. “That’s something we’ve been working on for years. Now we know. But we’re not going to talk about it.”
While this may not be the news most fans wanted to hear, at least we can look forward to this mystery project that Kevin Feige teased.