Deadpool and Wolverine is one of the most anticipated films in the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Along with the return of Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds to their legendary roles, the movie will serve as a celebration of Marvel’s history before Iron Man took flight in 2008.
Any good celebration has reunions. One of the biggest for fans comes in the form of Aaron Stanford, who will be making his grand return as Pyro after almost twenty years. Heroic Hollywood was able to sit down with the actor ahead of his return in Deadpool and Wolverine to discuss his experience with the film and why his character stands out in the hearts and minds of so many fans.
What was your reaction when you first learned you were going to make a return as Pyro in Deadpool and Wolverine?
Shock, first of all. I thought Pyro was long gone. It’s been nearly twenty years. They gave him a very clear finish in X-Men 3, he gets one-timed by Ice Man and that’s the end of him. I thought that was the end and suddenly I started getting phone calls.
I got on a Zoom call with Shawn Levy and he said, “We want to bring him back. We wanna resurrect Pyro. Are you interested in doing something like that?” Immediately, I jumped at the chance. It’s a great film to be in and I was very excited at the prospect of resurrecting this character.
Why do you think Pyro resonates with so many people even all these years later?
You know, first of all, I’m very thrilled to hear that you think he resonates with a lot of people! I’m hearing this more, now that he’s coming back to the forefront — I am hearing that people like him. That people dug him. I had always been afraid that he came off as so arrogant so much of the time, so brash. I thought he was just sort of the heel. And that maybe people didn’t like him, you know?
Of course, I, as the actor portraying him, had the entire backstory made up for him and there’s a lot of pain and a lot of loss that was beneath this arrogant d—ish behavior. I’m glad to see that people saw that and understood that and felt that and that they do relate to Pyro.
I think the best way to describe him is that he’s an outsider amongst outsiders. Even at the school for gifted mutants that he ends up at, which is a school for people who are absolutely on the fringe and brutalized and rejected from society. Even there, he can’t quite seem to fit in. And that’s why he ends up pivoting and making this move to the dark side with Magneto.
So, I think that’s what resonates with people. X-Men in general resonates with people who feel like they don’t fit in for whatever reason, who feel like outsiders. And Pyro is like the absolute pinnacle of that.
Do you view Deadpool and Wolverine as a victory lap for your time as a character, or do you see it as a new beginning for your time in the MCU?
I don’t bother with speculating too much about whether or not it’s the beginning of something else. I’m thrilled to be in it. It was an absolute blast. And, yes, I’m really happy that he has a chance to have a different ending than he did in X-3, which I think left a lot of people sort of unsatisfied. So it’s really nice that he gets a chance to come back and, as you said, take another lap.
What was it like reuniting with Hugh Jackman all these years later?
It was amazing! And Hugh, I’m sure, you’ve heard all about him. Famously he’s like the nicest guy on the planet. He’s a real prince among men. So it was great to see him. When we did the old movies, we were shooting those films for months and months at a time. You’re away on location. What ends up happening is cast and crew that you’re there with, they end up becoming like a surrogate family.
You get very close. And so to be able to see him after all these years and meet his son again, who, at the time, when I last knew him, was just a little kid. And all of a sudden Hugh has these grown children. It was really, really nice to be able to see him and revisit all that.
Back in those old movies, most of the time you only wore casual clothes as Pyro. What did it feel like to finally get a proper supersuit?
Everyone’s more keyed into this than I thought they would be! Yes! He finally has a proper super suit, which he never did in any of the other movies. I was acutely aware of that when we were shooting the films. I was like “I’m in my pajamas, and now I’m in sweatpants! Where’s my black leather?” So I never got the black leather, but I do now have a legit super suit.
This is a super suit that was taken from… I believe it’s the X-Men Ultimates series. And it’s a version of Pyro from some sort of alternate reality where he’s this character who’s sort of been driven insane and he’s burned over all of his body from playing with fire for his entire life and he’s got this very rugged super suit that’s kind of in the fashion of like a firefighter. So it’s like the anti-firefighter super suit. It’s the fire starter super suit! So, yes, I’m in that now. I’ve got the look. And Pyro came ready to play.
Way back in the day, you mentioned that Garth Ennis was one of your favorite writers, specifically his run on The Punisher. With his creation, The Boys, now as big as it is, would you ever want to join that universe?
Of course! Yes! Absolutely! Garth Ennis, he’s been like a singular fixation for me for a long time. There was a long time that all I read was Garth Ennis. For like a significant number of years. I would just go back to his war comics. It’s exhaustively researched. He’s just such an authority on that realm of history. So his stuff is absolutely incredible.
And The Boys, of course, I love because, yes, it’s again, it’s a lot like Deadpool, you know? It’s a satire. It’s a send-up of the superhero genre. I love playing in that world. It was a great opportunity on Deadpool to get to do a similar thing. To come in and play the old Pyro character from the old X-Men films but also have this new spin on it where it is meta it is self-aware and it is a bit of a send-up. You’re allowed to have a bit of a sense of humor about yourself. So that was pretty fun.
A lot of people think you’ve made it once you get the Marvel check, but you’ve described yourself as a blue-collar actor. What are some realities about being a working man in Hollywood that a lot of people don’t think about?
Being unemployed! It’s just a constant scramble. People are more aware of that now, people are more aware of everything now. The information super highway really just opened up the floodgates, and things are very different from back when I shot the original X-Men movies.
People didn’t talk about the box office back then. And now everybody is aware of “This movie broke this box office record! And this movie broke this box office record!” People are very very aware of it and they’re aware of the inner workings and the machinations of Hollywood. And I think a lot of people are aware that it’s a tough gig to stay employed.
It’s really hard. A lot of people want to do it. There’s a lot of competition. You gotta fight for every single role that you get. Every single time the job ends, that’s the end of your career. And you’ve got to jumpstart your career again with the next job. And that’s how it goes. I’ve been very, very fortunate that I’ve been able to have a career for nearly a quarter century now. it’s been fantastic but it’s a hard gig to keep going. But when you can, it’s the best. It’s the brass ring.
Were you aware back in the day that you had fan sites dedicated to you?
I knew of a couple, yeah! I knew of a few of them. I was always very flattered then, I’m still very flattered now. There are a couple of core sites that sort of have followed me through my entire career. It always just blows me away because I don’t think of myself like that and I come from a very small town, it’s very very far from Hollywood.
As you said, I’ve always described myself as a jobbing actor, a working actor, I’ve never gotten to the point where I can’t walk down the street. Which I’m very thankful for! I’m really afraid of big big fame. I don’t know how those people do it. It’s a nightmare. But to have those people, to know that there are people out there who see your work, enjoy it, that it means something to them, which is what I always wanted to do.
I always hoped to do for other people what actors had done for me growing up. Which is make me feel like someone else understood. I would see people give performances that suddenly revealed to me “Oh, other people feel the same way I do and they experience the same uncertainties and the same pains that I do and they want the same things.” When you see a certain performance that you really relate to and you say “That’s me, that person is speaking for me.” I always hope to have a performance or two where that was the case. And I think I’ve seen that that has happened to some people, and I’m just thrilled that that’s true.
Actors are often at the mercy of writers and directors for what roles they play. Are there any stories you want to play out that you haven’t gotten the chance to yet?
Yes! I write, so there’s lots of stuff that I work on. Lots of stories I like to tell. I have an idea for a Pyro story that sort of takes place in an alternate universe. It’s a grown Pyro who is an X-extremist basically. He was an X-activist extremist, he’s done some horrible things, and now he’s on the run from the law with his family. So that’s sort of an idea I’ve been incubating.
