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Blake Lively’s cameo in the new Deadpool & Wolverine was predicted long before the Deadpool movies came into existence, she has revealed.
Lively, who is married to Deadpool actor Ryan Reynolds, is one of a number of stars who make surprise cameos in the new comic book film, which was released on Thursday (25 July).
She’s a bit tricky to identify, though, as Lively portrays the masked Lady Deadpool, a female variant of the titular hero who arrives through a wormhole alongside a number of other Deadpool variants.
In a new Instagram post, Lively confirmed that she did indeed play the character, and also revealed that her casting in the role was written in the stars more than a decade ago.
The A Simple Favor actor wrote that Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld used her likeness as his inspiration for an unmasked Lady Deadpool way back in 2010, and shared a screenshot from 2022 in which Liefeld confirmed on his own Instagram that he was a fan of the actor.
“We unmasked [Lady Deadpool] in 2010, with her unblemished visage,” Liefeld wrote, adding that he and his wife Joy were such big fans of Lively’s star-making TV series Gossip Girl that he modelled the character’s look after her. “Upon meeting Blake on the set of Deadpool, I was tongue tied in the most embarrassing fashion. Years later at the Golden Globes I again bothered [her] to the point I think I was speaking in tongues. If ever we are blessed with Lady Deadpool on screen, I’m pretty certain Ms Lively will have some say in casting.”
Lively also revealed that she recalled being told about Reynolds’s plans for a Deadpool movie while they were shooting Green Lantern, an ill-fated comic book movie that has been frequently poked fun at in the Deadpool movies and by Reynolds himself since.
“In 2010 I was on Gossip Girl and about to film my first superhero movie, The Green Lantern with my kind Canadian costar Ryan Reynolds,” Lively wrote. “He told me, our other costar, another superhero newby [sic] Taika Waititi and all of us about Deadpool for the first time. It was a ‘meta’ superhero. Most of us didn’t know what exactly meta meant back then. Except Taika bc he’s always been more brilliant than the rest of us mortals.
“We understood in theory, but how it would come together for an audience was murky, for everyone but him. It wasn’t a real dream. The movie was never gonna happen.”
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Deadpool & Wolverine, which is in cinemas, has drawn mixed reviews from critics – including our own Clarisse Loughrey. But it’s sparked lots of attention for its cameos, particularly the shock return of the vampire hunter Blade, as played by Wesley Snipes. Snipes famously clashed with Reynolds on the set of 2004’s Blade: Trinity, and their feud is joked about in the new film.
Missing from the movie, however, is It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia actor Rob McElhenney, who announced this week that his cameo was left on the cutting room floor – despite his real-life business partnership with Reynolds.
Elsewhere, Reynolds revealed during a recent appearance on the YouTube show Hot Ones that he originally had a “horrible” idea to trick the Deadpool & Wolverine audience into thinking they had walked into an “intentionally bad” movie.
