As the month of December draws to a close and the New Year looms, fans are brimming with anticipation over the rapidly approaching arrival of 20th Century Fox’s Deadpool movie.

There’s no doubt that if you’ve really been counting down the days before The Merc With A Mouth hits theatres everywhere, you’re more than aware of the 12 Days of Deadpool promotional campaign that has provided a new treat every day, culminating with a December 25th release of the newest trailer. Fox and star Ryan Reynolds have done such a good job of this it’s easy to forget that they aren’t the only ones who can supply some new and much-desired information about the movie.

EW dropped their own little treat into the mix by providing an interview with Stefan Kapicic – the Serbian actor who plays Russian mutant Colossus in Deadpool. Fans might recall that Colossus had been portrayed by Canadian Daniel Cudmore in three previous X-Men films and although initial word had it that actor Andre Tricoteux would take over the role, EW has officially confirmed Kapicic’s status as the metal-skinned mutant. Speaking about the casting process, Kapicic said:

Given that Colossus is… well, colossal, director Tim Miller wanted the character to be over seven feet tall. Though Kapicic is tall, his 6’4 stature didn’t quite measure up, so a stunt double was used.

“It was such a top secret project from the beginning that I didn’t even know what I was auditioning for. It was only after the second round of casting that some of the names were revealed and I figured it out immediately, so it was a much bigger deal for me because I am such a huge fan.”

“Tim Miller’s idea of Colossus was to be bigger and stronger than everyone else, so for the motion capture they needed an extremely tall man. I’m 6-foot-4, but he wanted Colossus to be over 7 feet, so they used a stunt double to recreate his height, and he did very good job there.”

Last spring when Screen Rant visited the Deadpool set in Vancouver, director Tim Miller spoke about the need for Colossus to have a Russian accent in the Deadpool movie. Past incarnations of the character in X-Men movies had left Colossus with very little dialogue, delivered with no Russian accent. Given the character’s origins, this has always seemed a rather glaring omission. Thankfully, this will no longer be the case with Kapicic’s portrayal.

Kapicic also goes on to describe himself as “a big comic book geek” who counts Deadpool as one of his favorite characters and who received his first X-Men comic book when he was six years old. This sort of passion and history with the genre can’t help but color his performance and should help further bolster the confidence of Deadpool fans.

“Giving the voice and expressions to a character is giving it a soul. It is a specific type of acting and it must be precise as it has to bring a character to life. Colossus’ voice is not much different than mine as Tim loved my natural color and range of voice, so we kept it and worked more on the Russian accent. The best note I received was to be authentic.”

Unfortunately, the interview doesn’t mention anything about what sort of role Colossus has in the new film and why it is that he and Deadpool square off in what appears to be a rather bloody and brutal battle. Perhaps the answers to these questions will become a little clearer when the new trailer drops on December 25th.

Deadpool opens in theaters on February 12, 2016, followed by X-Men: Apocalypse on May 27, 2016; Gambit sometime in 2017; Wolverine 3 on March 3, 2017; and some as-yet unspecified X-Men film on July 13, 2018. The New Mutants is also in development.

Source: EW