X-Men: Evangeline Lilly turned down Hugh Jackman’s offer to appear in the franchise

Last Updated on February 23, 2023

While Evangeline Lilly is firmly a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe thanks to her role as Hope van Dyne/Wasp, she was given the opportunity to suit up as a Marvel hero much earlier. While speaking with Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Evangeline Lilly revealed that Hugh Jackman came to her with an offer to join the X-Men franchise… and she turned him down.

Hugh Jackman offered Evangeline Lilly a role in the X-Men franchise while the pair were shooting Reel Steel together, but she wasn’t interested. “[Hugh] was like, ‘Hey, so, the X-Men guys are asking me if I would approach you because they know that you won’t talk to anybody. They knew I was working with you and were interested to know if it would ever interest you to do an X-Men thing,’” Lilly said. “I was like, ‘No. It doesn’t interest me. I’m not interested.’” Lilly added that she felt like “such a dick” because she was talking to “the X-Men” and had to turn him down. “I felt so rude,” Lilly said. It’s not clear which X-Men movie Fox was interested in snagging Evangeline Lilly for, but X-Men: First Class was shooting at the same time as Reel Steel and continued on for several months after the latter had wrapped.

This wasn’t the first time Evangeline Lilly had turned down an offer to play a superhero, as she had also met with Joss Whedon about Wonder Woman. “It didn’t appeal and there was nothing about the meeting that like, jazzed me or made me think like, ‘Oh, I’ve gotta do this,’” Lilly said. “Nothing clicked. Nothing felt good.” Lilly added that she believes Whedon took a slight offence at her refusal, but she was fine with that. “I was okay with burning bridges,” Lilly said. “I was okay with not having everyone in Hollywood wanna work with me…I just always had to do what felt right for me. And honestly I wasn’t into superhero movies and that’s the main reason why, in both of these instances, I just kind of felt like I don’t know what I get out of this.“

Evangeline Lilly did eventually suit up when she joined the cast of Ant-Man, going on to appear in Ant-Man and the Wasp, Avengers: Endgame, and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which hits theaters tomorrow. You can check out a review of the latest Ant-Man sequel from our own JimmyO right here.