Patrick Stewart Met With Kevin Feige Over MCU Roles, But Not Likely to Reprise Xavier

Patrick Stewart says that he’s met with Kevin Feige about a possible role in the MCU, and while Charles Xavier did come up it isn’t likely to happen due to Logan. Stewart spoke with Digital Spy for a new interview promoting Star Trek: Picard on CBS All-Access and was asked about the possibility of him playing the role he did in the original X-Men films when the mutants make their way into the MCU.

“I met with Kevin Feige a couple of months ago and we had long, long conversations,” he explained. “And there have been moves and suggestions, which include Charles Xavier.”

Stewart said that the hestitance to bring him back as Xavier, one of the best castings of a comic book character to date, comes from him and not Marvel. “Here’s the problem,” he said. “If we had not made Logan, then yes, I would probably be ready to get into that wheelchair one more time and be Charles Xavier. But Logan changed all that.”

He continued, “Here’s a tiny anecdote. The first time that Hugh [Jackman] and I saw the film in public was at the Berlin Film Festival, which is where the movie premiered. Shortly after Xavier’s death scene, I found myself getting very emotional but I had to keep a hold of myself because we were sitting in the middle of this cinema. And then I saw Hugh’s hand come up to his eye and wipe away a tear. I thought, ‘Dammit, the bugger’s crying. Oh, let it out Patrick'”

Patrick noted that he tried to hold it together but eventually “sat there snivelling” in the theater. “Hugh took my hand, and we held hands with the last seven or eight minutes of the film because there was so many things we were upset about. We were moved by the story. We were moved by one another. We were moved by the movie. But we also both made the decision that we were saying goodbye to our characters as well. In that sense, it was not just the deaths of those two men in the franchise, but it was also goodbye to our part in them as well.”

Stewart played Professor X in the first three X-Men films as well as X-Men: Days of Future Past, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, The Wolverine, and of course Logan.