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Mahershala Ali says he’s embracing the pressure and responsibility of playing Blade in the MCU but that how his character debuts in Chloé Zhao’s Eternals did cause him a little extra anxiety.
Appearing on The Late Show to discuss his new Apple movie Swan Song, Ali touched on bringing his version of Blade to life for the first time in an Eternals post-credits scene. The catch of Ali’s cameo is that he is never seen on-screen, only heard in voiceover as the vampire hunter.
“You lose a lot of sleep over it. I was losing sleep over this line because, ideally, you want to be talking once you are filming,” Ali told host Stephen Colbert. “One hundred percent of the time, my first day on any set, on any job, I hate it. I hate how I sound. I don’t believe myself. You’re trying to get comfortable in the character, so to have to talk before you actually film was challenging.”
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Speaking to Empire magazine in November, Ali attributed some of that anxiety to crafting vocal nuances of a character he has yet to physically embody on set. “I’m pretty particular about my choices, like most actors, and so having to make some choices –— even with a line, vocally — this early on, it brought up some very real anxieties,” he explained.
In a recent interview with ComicBook.com’s Phase Zero podcast, Eternals producer Nate Moore revealed that the team had considered two versions of the Blade cameo, “one where we would cut to him and one where we wouldn’t.” The question of “How textual do you want it to be?” was raised, and the team ultimately decided “to tease it a little bit, to hear the voice and not see the man.”
Like many MCU roles, there’s been mounting anticipation for Ali’s spin on the superhero, who was notably brought to life on the big screen in the late ’90s to mid-’00s by Wesley Snipes. While Ali says the responsibility he feels for all his roles is “equal,” he told Colbert that he’s never before had one like Blade. “I’ve never walked into a role where the anticipation of it was so great,” he said. “Where people were already so familiar with the character, they have real opinions and points of view and all that. So it feels different. There’s clearly an added layer of pressure, which I will embrace.”
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