The double-edged sword of operating in Taylor Swift’s orbit is that it can shoot you to a new stratosphere of fame, but forever after her presence in your life will be completely inescapable. Just ask director Shawn Levy, who happened to go to a Jets/Chiefs game with Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman and has now spent the last three weeks dodging questions about casting Taylor Swift in Deadpool 3. Asked on the latest episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast if Swift might appear as X-Men’s Dazzler, Levy says carefully, “I feel like, ‘Oh wow, I went to a football game a couple weeks ago and I had a really good time with friends, and I am thrilled to be talking about other things.’”
Of course, Levy is super complimentary towards Swift, whom he has said has “the makings of a hell of a director” and even compared to Steven Spielberg in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. He’s got some firsthand experience with Swift’s directing style, too, having had a cameo in All Too Well: The Short Film.
But as for cameos in his film, Levy is a firm “no comment” on Taylor Swift and pretty much any other Deadpool newcomer besides Matthew Macfadyen and Emma Corrin, because, duh! Why would he spoil a movie he hasn’t even finished yet?
He does promise some mind-blowing cameos, though, telling Josh Horowitz, “[What] blew my mind also is how easy some of those cameos have been. People love Deadpool. People love Ryan. Thankfully people also seem to like my work. They know that Ryan and I are in a groove of creative brotherhood that is unique and seems to be working.” He adds, “I love the proliferation of casting rumors around my movie, because there’s so many that it’s impossible to know what’s real and what’s made up.”
Elsewhere on Happy Sad Confused, Levy discusses picking up projects after the strike including Stranger Things and his still-in-development Star Wars movie. Regarding the final season of Netflix’s juggernaut series, he says he’d love to see an episode (or all the episodes) screened in a theater. “This season is epic and broad in its cinematic scope, but it’s very much Stranger Things. And I have to credit the Duffers, they have always—you read the outline sometimes, and it’s massive. But then you read the scripts, and you remember again and again and again, that their instinct for anchoring the epic in the intimate, and for anchoring the darkness of genre in the warmth of these characters, it’s so innate to them,” Levy gushes. “It is, in my opinion, one of their greatest super powers. And as a result, season five, like every season before, gets bigger in scale but doesn’t forget who and what it is.”
As for Star Wars, Levy seems aware that a project in early development might not ever see the light of day (particularly at Lucasfilm…) but stresses that “I really wanna make that movie.” Kathleen Kennedy told him that “‘Your movies have a consistent sense of fun and warmth, and that’s what I want a Shawn Levy Star Wars movie to be, that’s what we want Star Wars to be,’” Levy claims, and “I’m running with that mandate. … To play in that sandbox, it’s a blast.”