It’s the summer of Keen and we didn’t even know it. After a small, but impactful role on the latest Star Wars show, The Acoylte, Dafne Keen just showed up in the new trailer for Deadpool & Wolverine, reprising her role from Logan. That’s two big roles in two big-time franchises with one major link besides release proximity: she had to lie about both of them.
For The Acolyte, Keen had to act like her Jedi Padawan, Jecki Lon, didn’t take three lightsabers stabs to the chest halfway through the series. For Deadpool & Wolverine, she couldn’t even reveal she was in it. Until now.
“I had a great time keeping it secret,” Keen told Entertainment Weekly. “I had to do a bunch of press for a job [The Acolyte] that I just finished. I got asked in every interview, and I just got to lie, which was really funny.” Keen said that to do that, she turned to an actor who, a few years back, became infamous for doing the same thing. “All the inspo comes from Andrew Garfield,” Keen said. “He is the master at this.”
Keen actually said she got the call about returning to the role of X-23 after a full day of filming and stunt training, presumably for The Acolyte. She didn’t know her agent had been negotiating the deal for a month. “I immediately screamed,” Keen said. “I dropped my phone in the bath. I had to put it in rice; it was a whole thing.”
Of course, we don’t yet know what role X-23 plays in Deadpool & Wolverine but from the brief reveal in the trailer, it certainly seems like she’s become something of a mentor for this new version of Logan. “It was wonderful to get to come back to [the relationship between she and Logan] and explore that as a grownup, now understanding parental rage so much more and bringing that to the table for her,” Keen said. “I found that Laura in Logan stumbled into having a dad and then having lost her dad, we find her again really knowing how to appreciate—and with this kind of wiseness to her—how much her father means to her.”
Deadpool & Wolverine opens next week. The Acolyte is now streaming but, hey, if you’re only watching for Keen? You can stop 5 episodes in.
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