Taylor Kitsch sat down with RT today on the beach in Cannes to share details of his latest project, The Bang Bang Club, in which he plays a photojournalist in post-Apartheid South Africa alongside Ryan Phillippe and Malin Akerman. While we talked, of course, we couldn’t help but ask about his next steps with Gambit, who he played in this year’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Fox wasted no time announcing a movie based on Ryan Reynolds‘ Deadpool character in the film, but Kitsch seemed unaware that a Wolverine sequel had been given the go-ahead too and he shared his excitement with RT.
“Man, good on Hugh for doing that to his body again,” he laughed as we told him about the film. “I hadn’t heard that was going to happen! You have my brain going now about what I’d love to do with Gambit!”
Kitsch clearly developed a love for the character while he was making Wolverine, and told us how excited he’d be to jump back into the mantle. “I’m just excited to go deeper into Gambit. It’s a flattering thing when people say that the only shitty part about the character is we didn’t see enough of him. If that’s the case, bring it on. I want to go deep into Gambit.”
The character, for him, has much more to him than was explored in his brief screen time as part of Wolverine. “He has so many more colours to explore. I want to go dark with that cat. There are so many things I want people to see of him and he really is his own deal. In Wolverine he was very much moving the story along. If I can have some moments where you go deeper into Gambit’s back-story and why he was the way he was at that poker table — that’s a fun thing to explore.”
Kitsch is also excited about the possibility of delivering more action as Gambit. “I have the tools now to do some larger fights and I’d be really excited to get a chance to do that, too. I have so many ideas in my mind right now!”
Of course there’s been no confirmation that Gambit will appear in the Wolverine sequel, with rumours swirling about it focussing on the clawed one’s time in Japan during World War II. Nevertheless, as one of the most popular characters in the X-Men stable we’d not be surprised to hear that his role will be expanded in some form, either as part of Wolverine 2 or in another film. It seems, at least, that in Taylor Kitsch he’s in safe, well-researched hands.
