SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Deadpool 2. If you have not yet seen the film, please bookmark this page, and save the read until after your screening!
There are many wonderful and hilarious cameos in Deadpool 2, from the X-Men to Brad Pitt, but there is one A-lister so incredibly well hidden that you probably didn't even notice him. He appears in the scene where Cable first travels back in time, and encounters two farmers discussing the best way to clean yourself after using the toilet. One of these men is very clearly Firefly/Rogue One: A Star Wars Story actor Alan Tudyk, but you will probably be shocked to learn that his co-star in the scene is none other than Matt Damon -- as I learned from my recent interview with Deadpool 2 co-writers/producers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese:
Paul Wernick: We were like Ocean's 11. We had Brad Pitt, and we had Matt Damon!Wait, Matt Damon is in this? Where?Rhett Reese: We sneaked him past you!I didn't see that.Paul Wernick: He was one of the rednecks... He's credited as Dickie Greenleaf, who was a character in The Talented Mr. Ripley.
In case you couldn't tell, I was surprised to learn about this special cameo as well, as I had no idea that Matt Damon was in Deadpool 2. I sat down with Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese earlier this week during the New York press day for the blockbuster, and it was while discussing the amazing Brad Pitt cameo that we stumbled into the Damon discussion. They told me that nobody had figured it out before our conversation -- though one person on the internet apparently did begin to decode the "Dickie Greenleaf" hint (it's the identity that Damon's character assumes in The Talented Mr. Ripley, though Jude Law plays the real Dickie Greenleaf in the thriller, and there was apparently some debate about who the trick credit was really masking).
You might be kicking yourself for not figuring out this cameo while actually watching Deadpool 2, but you really shouldn't be too hard on yourself. Not only is the lighting in the scene not exactly optimal, but Matt Damon is both using a fake accent and is under extremely heavy makeup. According to the writers, he was so unrecognizable that you might not have even known it was him if you were standing by his side on the day of production. Said Rhett Reese,
Our makeup artist Bill Corso is the best in the business, literally. And he put Matt in this prosthetic, this chubby suit, and this facial kind of puffiness. And you just would have never known it was Matt Damon. And he came out, and when he came out, he said he did it all in this accent, that sounds a little Matthew McConaughey-esque. So if you had to guess, you'd almost say it was Matthew McConaughey because that's who he sounds like the most. But if you hadn't known, you wouldn't have known. Of course, words flew around the set, people did know, but it was only because rumors traveled. If he walked out of that makeup trailer and no one had said a word, no one would have ever known.
Part of what makes Matt Damon's cameo so humorous is the fact that this is actually his second Marvel cameo in about six months: he also memorably plays an Asgardian actor in Taika Waititi's Thor: Ragnarok. That being said, the funny still goes one step further than that. It turns out that Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese had no idea that MCU appearance had been filmed, and they were as surprised as anyone to see him playing Fake Loki in the third Thor feature. Wernick commented,
We shot that cameo before Thor: Ragnarok had come out. We didn't know he had a cameo in Thor: Ragnarok. And we're like, 'Fucking Matt Damon is cameoing in every Marvel movie? What is happening?'
This is just one of the many wonderful things about Deadpool 2 -- and just one of the many wonderful things I talked about with Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, and the other actors and filmmakers behind the blockbuster. Stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for a whole lot more of my interview coverage, and see the film in theaters now!
