Rob Liefeld on getting in trouble for asking Russell Crowe to read for Cable

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

It was quite the exciting time when rumblings of just which actor would play Cable in DEADPOOL 2 began swirling around, and no one was more excited that creator Rob Liefeld, in fact, his excitement actually got him into a bit of trouble. During a panel at Amazing Las Vegas Comic Con, Liefeld revealed to Collider that he was sweating some of the Cable casting rumours, so he put one of his own picks out there by tweeting that Russell Crowe should read for the part. Unfortunately, that wound up being a bit of a mistake. Take it away, Rob!

One night before I went to bed, I didn’t know Russell Crowe was on Twitter, and I stupidly tweeted to Russell Crowe – not ever thinking he’d answer me – and I go, ‘Hey Russell, you should read for Cable!’ That didn’t turn out very well, I got yelled at a lot, because I woke up – because he’s in Australia – to Russell Crowe saying, ‘Read for it?!’, and my manager said, ‘Yeah… Russell Crowe doesn’t read for parts, Rob. You kind of insulted him.’ I’m like, ‘I’m sorry! They just haven’t picked Cable yet so I’m just putting it out there.’ And so then my phone rings, and some Fox people may or may not have yelled at me for an hour. I was kind of off Twitter for a while.

Here are the relevant Tweets so you can check out the exchange for yourself.

As we know, Russell Crowe didn't wind up being in the mix for Cable and the gig went to Thanos himself, Josh Brolin, who absolutely knocked it out of the park. It would have been intriguing to have seen what Crowe could have done with the part, but I'd be much more interested in getting to listen in on the phone-call Rob Liefeld got from Fox. Josh Brolin is set to reprise the role of Cable for the X-FORCE movie, and although I'm certainly a fan of what he did in DEADPOOL 2, the actor told USA Today that he is itching to do better in X-FORCE.

I do like the way it turned out. But I thought I could have been better. But then it clicked. I got to know (Reynolds) better. I trust him more. And we started this volley where it was like, 'This is actually fun.' Thank God. Man. I literally want to redeem myself to myself. I want to do a better version of what I do.

DEADPOOL 2 is still playing in theaters.