Daniel Radcliffe once again addressed rumors that he’s playing Wolverine in an upcoming X-Men project.
The Harry Potter actor, 34, has long been the subject of speculation surrounding his supposed casting as the beloved character, previously played by Hugh Jackman in the film franchise. The gossip was reignited earlier this year after photos emerged from the set of the actor’s TBS comedy series Miracle Workers — in which Radcliffe donned only his underwear, showing off his muscle-bound physique.
In a Vanity Fair lie detector interview published on Tuesday, October 17, the actor — alongside his castmates in the Broadway musical revival Merrily We Roll Along — Radcliffe faced the question yet again.
“Did you start the Wolverine rumor?” his costar Lindsay Mendez asked Radcliffe, who was hooked up to the lie detector machine. When Radcliffe said no, she followed up with, “So you just got buff for no reason?”
“I got buff because I am obsessive, and I want to … You’ve seen my parents, they’re, like, insane fitness people,” Radcliffe responded. “So that’s just been passed on. But no. No Wolverine. Flattered, but no.”
Radcliffe previously denied the Wolverine rumors in a GQ profile in 2022, saying the speculation was “purely a press tour rumor.”
He also offered an explanation in an interview with Entertainment Weekly earlier that year. “Wolverine is short, so every so often they’re like, ‘Who’s a short actor?’” he said. “There’s never been any actual truth to it. Every so often I get bored of answering the questions sensibly, so I just make a joke like I did the other day and that sort of has reignited the rumors of it, but there’s nothing going on.”
Despite getting “bored” of the questions, Radcliffe says he isn’t opposed to the rumors that he’s playing the buff Marvel character.
“I will not stop anybody from doing anything,” he told EW. “Any comparison that implies me being even remotely in the world of Hugh Jackman is inherently flattering.”
In September 2022, it was revealed that Jackman, 55, would reprise the role of Wolverine in Deadpool 3 alongside Ryan Reynolds, marking the actors’ first reunion since 2009’s Wolverine: Origins.
“It’s not like adding Hugh Jackman to a movie like this is a hard sell. It’s an immediate and emphatic, unqualified yes,” Reynolds, 46, told Collider at the time. “It’s a lot of moving parts and Fox and X-Men and all that kind of stuff that Marvel needs to sort through. A lot of red tape in order to make that happen. And they did it.”
The film is set to hit theaters in May 2024.
