Being the media addict that I am, I have seen every episode of Two Guys And A Girl (nee Two Guys, A Girl, And A Pizza Place), and that means that I know Nathan Fillion and Ryan Reynolds go way back. While the latter was a star on the ABC sitcom from the start in 1998, the former joined in Season 2 and eventually became a major character. Despite knowing that history, however, I wasn’t aware of two other more recent bits of trivia: Fillion has a cameo in Deadpool that didn’t make the final cut, and he was lined up for a part in Deadpool 2 before voicing Headpool in Deadpool & Wolverine.
Fillion has a number of comic book movies appearances on his resume, including all three chapters of the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy (admittedly his role in Vol. 2 is very hard to spot) and the newly released Superman, in which he plays Guy Gardner a.k.a. Green Lantern. While recently talking with Entertainment Weekly, however, the actor made note of his deleted scene in Deadpool:
I was actually in the first Deadpool; my scene got cut out. You’ll have to remember I was filming Castle at the time. It had to be a very small part, and I requested that I be unrecognizable. It’s in a deleted scenes thing. I think you can get it if you buy the movie digitally.
Nathan Fillion was apparently too busy with his commitment to his long-running network series to take a bigger part in Deadpool, there is a deleted scene where he can very briefly be seen as a towel guy in the sequence set in the strip club that employs Morena Baccarin’s Vanessa.
Ryan Reynolds reached out to him about, but he is appreciative of his former co-star staying in touch and wanting to work together. Eventually they finally got to reteam in the making of Deadpool & Wolverine, which the Rookie star voicing the floating zombie head known as Headpool… but even that role wasn’t the initial idea:
He asked me to come in and audition for something in the second Deadpool, which was very generous of him. We’re still in touch. He’s a very generous man, and he’s very interested in sharing the wealth, honestly. He’s got so many incredible opportunities, and he likes to remember his friends and spread those opportunities around… Ryan would text me and say, ‘Hey, would you do me a favor?’ Like I’m doing him a favor. We recorded a bunch of different stuff. We started at one character, then we moved over to being Headpool, and then we were futzing the jokes.
It’s a cameo that fits right alongside a number of other special appearances in the sequence where Deadpool and Wolverine face off against a collection of Deadpool variants. In addition to Nathan Fillion as Headpool, the collective also includes Blake Lively as Ladypool and Matthew McConaughey as Cowboypool.
Now feeling in the mood to watch the Deadpool movies? That’s very easy to do if you have a Disney+ subscription, as Deadpool, Deadpool 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine are all available in the streamer’s library.