Video: Ryan Reynolds is still living the high of not only getting his dream project made and released, but also having it be a giant success. Taraji P. Henson’s Empire character is as recognisable as Deadpool, but her real passion was getting to star in Hidden Figures as Katherine Johnson, a maths genius working, unrecognised, at NASA.
Images: Deadpool, Fox; Hidden Figures, Fox
In Variety‘s “Actors on Actors” series, Reynolds and Henson talked to each other about their careers, social media and how badly they wanted to do these two projects. Henson says when she got the Hidden Figures script, “I read it and I remember thinking to myself, ‘How come I haven’t heard of these women?’ So I made it my mission to do the film. I didn’t care how much they were paying.”
Reynolds recounts the well-known story of his 11-year journey to Deadpool, telling Henson, “I represented the death of the superhero for a while. After Green Lantern, I was pretty much unhireable. Deadpool was one of those things that was just so specific — it was like this weird superhero anarchy that I loved so much.”
You can watch the whole interview below, but the best part is right at the beginning where Henson talks about the extra challenge of playing someone who is still alive, and how much making a movie Johnson would like means to her. Which is followed by Henson and Reynolds bonding over being bad at maths.