Black Widow star O-T Fagbenle has revealed that he originally auditioned for another, very different role in the Marvel movie: Taskmaster.
“Basically, I first auditioned for Taskmaster, and it was a really incredible speech, actually. It was an audition I was very proud of,” Fagbenle told The Direct. “I’ve still got it in the back someplace. I made him with an African accent, and he was this kind of maniacal-like character.”
Instead, he ended up playing Rick Mason in the 2021 prequel, a figure from Natasha’s past with ties to S.H.I.E.L.D. Taskmaster ended up being the alter ego of Antonia Dreykov, played by Olga Kurylenko, a Red Room assassin with photographic reflexes who’s manipulated by her father.
“In the various iterations of the movie, that version of Taskmaster went away, and then they just came to me and were like, ‘Hey, there is this character called Mason, do you want to play Mason?'” Fagbenle continued. “So I was like, ‘Hell yeah, I’d love to play Mason!’ And so, the Taskmaster that I was going to be didn’t exist in that iteration of Black Widow.”
Mason, however, made a brief appearance in the Disney Plus series Secret Invasion in 2023, but Fagbenle hopes that isn’t the last we’ve seen of him in the MCU. “Listen, this what I said to Eric [Pearson, screenwriter], I said, ‘Why are you leaving me out of Thunderbolts*, man? I did come back. I did some Secret Invasion, Mason appeared there. And so, yeah, I mean, like a true superhero, when they give me the call [I’m ready to go].”
Kurylenko’s Taskmaster returned to the big screen in new Marvel movie Thunderbolts*, alongside her Black Widow co-stars Florence Pugh and David Harbour. However, things don’t go so well for her…
Thunderbolts* is out now in theaters. For more on the movie, check out our Thunderbolts* review and our guide to the Thunderbolts* post-credits scenes.
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