Lacey Bridges
Nathan Fillion’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 cameo (as ‘Simon Williams’) was left on the cutting room floor, but director James Gunn has shared with Facebook fans a bit of his performance.
“As many of you know one of my best friends in the world is Nathan Fillion. Along with Michael Rooker and Gregg Henry he’s been in every movie I’ve directed — even as a monstrous, perverted voice in Guardians of the Galaxy. I didn’t have a good cameo for him in Vol. 2 — and I wanted to bring him more fully into the MCU at some point, so I didn’t want to make him Aakon Guard #2, narrowing his chance of a more substantial role in the future. I really do love the character of Simon Williams/Wonder Man in the comics — a sometimes douchey actor/superhero — and could see Nathan clearly in that role (not because he’s a douchebag but because he’s great at playing one). But, of course, in a movie set 99.9% in space I didn’t really have a place for him.
“So in a small flash to Earth I decided to put a theater playing a ‘Simon Williams Film Festival,’ with six Simon Williams movie posters outside. Obviously, from the posters, he’s had a run of B movies. Most of them in themselves are Easter eggs of some sort or another. Unfortunately, the small section of the scene where they appeared slowed down the movie and I had to cut the Easter eggs from the film (along with storefronts named after comic book luminaries Starlin, Mantlos, Annett and others). Equally a bummer was that a lot of people took photos of these posters on the day so suddenly every fan site was reporting that Nathan was playing Wonder Man in the movie. He was even the third-billed actor on IMDB! So that’s the full story. Nathan’s only cameo in the movie ever were these posters. I’ll post them all over the next few days.”
Here’s the first poster, a movie in which Williams was playing none other than Tony Stark. Pretty sure I’ve seen that poster before.
