WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Marvel Studios’ Eternals, now in theaters.
Mahershala Ali opened up about what was technically his first experience playing the iconic Marvel vampire hunter Blade, and how it proved to be nerve-wracking in an unforeseen way.
“It was scary,” Ali told Empire, referring to the one line of dialogue he uttered as Blade in Eternals‘ post-credit sequence. “Because, you know, you’re talking before you’re filming it. I’m pretty particular about my choices, like most actors, and so having to make some choices — even with a line, vocally — this early on, it brought up some very real anxieties. And it made the job real. It’s like, ‘Okay, this is happening now,’ you know, and that’s exciting.”
Ali’s line was spoken in the final moments of Eternals, as Kit Harington’s character of Dane Whitman approached an enchanted sword. Marvel comic readers may know Dane as the fantasy-flavored character known as the Black Knight, who wields the Ebony Blade — a weapon forged by Merlin which grants tremendous power at the cost of slowly ruining its wielder’s mind. As Dane prepares to pick up the blade, he hears the voice of another person in the room who says: “Sure you’re ready for that, Mr. Whitman?”
Both Ali and Eternals director Chloé Zhao have confirmed that this voice belongs to Blade, making the scene technically the character’s first appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
“That Marvel world is obviously the biggest in film, and just to get my little introduction to that — starting with the Comic Con a couple years ago, and now the very early stages of stepping into the shoes of that character — it felt special and really cool,” Ali told Empire. “I’m excited to get going and do more.”
Ali’s casting as Marvel’s premiere vampire killer — previously played by Wesley Snipes in a New Line Cinema trilogy that predated the MCU — was first announced at the 2019 San Diego Comic-Con. According to Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, Ali campaigned specifically for the role and was interested in portraying another member of the Marvel Universe after previously playing Harlem criminal boss Cornell “Cottonmouth” Stokes in Netflix’s Luke Cage series.
Aside from a brief hint in Eternals, Blade has been rumored to appear in Marvel’s upcoming Moon Knight show on Disney+, along with Dracula, who will supposedly appear as a big bad in the series. The release date of the standalone Blade film has yet to be revealed, though a now-deleted tweet from the official Marvel India Twitter account initially listed it as Oct. 7, 2022.
Source: Empire
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