The X-Men movies were rarely all that much fun to watch, but it sounds like there were some laughs behind the scenes. Jessica Chastain has recalled a particular prank during thriller movie Dark Phoenix that’s particularly hilarious.
“We were shooting X-Men and [McAvoy is] Professor X, and he’s in the wheelchair, he’s on wires, and at some point he’s being lifted up,” Chastain told The Kelly Clarkson Show. “He does the scene. It’s good, and I had planned this with the director. The director said, ‘Final take. Please do it again.’ So they lift him up, and he’s acting like he’s being lifted by this magic. All of a sudden, the ‘Macarena’ starts playing. And the guys that were holding the wires were having him dance the Macarena.”
Chastain points out that she’s done several films with McAvoy, so they have a good enough relationship where something like this would come off like a joke. She points to Michael Sheen and states he’s not someone she’d so quickly prank. That said, it’s a tough at to follow. “There’s no topping it. I think it was the best,” she says.
Chastain and McAvoy first worked together on anthology drama movie The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, and have since collaborated in horror movie It: Chapter Two. That said, it sounds like Dark Phoenix might have been the most memorable experience.
Written and directed by Simon Kinberg, Dark Phoenix adapted elements of the comic book storyline of the same name. It would be the second last X-Men action movie before The New Mutants in 2020 and the mutants became dormant as part of Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox.
It was recently announced that Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine would be in Deadpool 3, indicating we could see Xavier’s School for Gifted Children in the near future. Hopefully we’ll get a ‘Macarena’ needle-drop for the funsies.
You can soon see Chastain in The Good Nurse, coming to Netflix October 26. Our Emma-Jane Betts gave it three stars in her The Good Nurse review, writing that it’s “full of powerful performances”.