Note: This piece talks about potential SPOILERS for the X-Men franchise.
Fans of the X-Men franchise may have been surprised to see Famke Janssen return as Jean Grey in last year’s The Wolverine, but no one was more surprised to see her also appearing at the end of Bryan Singer’s X-Men: Days of Future Past than SuperHeroHype, who spoke to the Dutch-born actress last year and specifically asked her whether she might be returning for the movie. At the time, she said that Jean Grey wasn’t coming back “as far as she knows,” but since we now know that isn’t the case, we were curious what happened.
Fortunately, SuperHeroHype had a chance to speak with Janssen more recently, shortly after she finished shooting Taken 3, due out on January 9, 2015 (which she kept similarly mum about) to find out how that great end scene cameo with some of the other original X-Men came to pass.
It turns out that the scene in question wasn’t done in reshoots later. In fact, she had already shot the scene before we interviewed her last time. “I’m a really good liar it turns out,” she laughed when asked about her earlier statement. “By then I’d already filmed it. I was sworn to secrecy that’s all. I’m not really keen on lying and I have a lot of problem with people who come into my life and lie, but if I’m forced to do it, it does not come easy. There has been two moments now, with ‘Wolverine’ and with ‘X-Men’ movies, especially ‘Days of Future Past’ where I was sworn to secrecy so I kept my word.”
“They were deep into filming when they approached me,” she admitted. “I had run into James Marsden at various film festivals with films, and we’ve bumped into one another, but I don’t get to see Patrick (Stewart) or any of them as often or frequently as I want to, so whenever we’re on set together, it’s sort of like a family reunion.”
We assume she must have dealt with a lot of being sworn to secrecy while making the original three “X-Men” movies but enjoyed having a chance to return to such a beloved comic book character. “That’s generally what I find wonderful about these X-Men characters, that there are as many female characters are there male, which doesn’t seem to be the case most of the time, I find. A lot of these comic book adaptations aren’t necessarily like that a lot of the time—the women’s parts are essentially the girlfriends or whatever—so it’s really nice to play the scientist, doctor or a strong interesting character. And then we have to really focus on the love story part of it on Wolverine and Jean Grey, and it keeps giving something, especially because it supposedly can’t go anywhere, so it becomes even more fun to play around with it.”
“That’s thanks to Bryan Singer,” she continued. “He set it up as a universe full of interesting strong women.”
Janssen didn’t have any thoughts on who she might want to see playing a younger Jean Grey as she hadn’t thought about it, although she fancied the idea of playing her younger self, which oddly was the same thing Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen had been joking about for years before “First Class.”
X-Men: Days of Future Past is now playing in theaters across the globe. Look for the rest of our interview with Ms. Janssen on ComingSoon.net real soon, as we talk to her about some of her upcoming aspirations as a writer/director.
