That puts Aaron Stanford in a unique position.
“Is that true?
Is everyone else still completely hidden?”
Aaron Stanford.Storm Santos
he asks while speaking withEntertainment Weeklyrecently.
In truth, everyone else hasn’t beencompletelyhidden.
Then, of course, there arethe paparazzi photos that leaked from setand sent the internet rumor mill ablaze.
Aaron Stanford’s Pyro in ‘X2: X-Men United’.
Storm Santos
Stanford, however, can actually talk about his return.
“Then there was another phone call and another phone call and just more and more inquiries.”
“He said, ‘Yeah, you guessed correctly.
Aaron Stanford.Storm Santos
We want to bring Pyro back after 20 years,'” Stanford says.
The 47-year-old Massachusetts-born Los Angeleno has vivid memories of auditioning for Pyro, a.k.a.
I’m the worst one."
Aaron Stanford’s Pyro in ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’.
“That was the whole audition.
That was it,” Stanford says.
Go ahead and improv."
He began hurling imaginary fireballs around the room.
“I started singing the theme song toCops.
Stanford left humiliated but it was that flair that got him the job.
Actually filming his audition scene on set was a different matter entirely.
Stanford was used to low-budget indie films at the time, not million-dollar pyrotechnics that involved blowing up cars.
“I was the only one standing in the foreground just completely in the path of this blast.
So suddenly it didn’t seem quite as fun anymore.
Everything was okay, but there were a few moments of doubt there for sure.”
“For whatever reason it didn’t happen,” Stanford says.
I essentially just assumed that was it.
I had done those movies, a lot of time had passed, and they were cherished memories.
I didn’t believe that Pyro would be making any more appearances.”
“InX2, we start off with Pyro in Xavier’s School for Gifted Mutants.
The SWAT team bursts in in the middle of the night and we have to flee.
So for half the movie, I’m in my jammies.
I never got the cool leather, tactical suit that all the X-Men wear.
And inX3, I was just dressed in an ensemble from Hot Topic, basically.
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Pyro even gets his own car.
“It’s this gigantic stretch hot rod,” he says.
“They built that thing and we raced it across the desert.
I’m sitting there strapped into a pilot’s chair behind a minigun.
You heard this tremendous racket explosion.
As it fell, it dropped under the car and probably almost busted an axle.
So, yeah, that was an exciting little first run in that car.”
All the other details will have to wait untilDeadpool & Wolverineopens in theaters July 26.
“They’re a really tight bunch,” he says of Marvel.
“I’m so paranoid.”
