Black Widow Star Calls Reshoots "Soul-Destroying," Wanted Their Role to Be Recast

One Black Widow star says that working on the Marvel Studios movie was "soul destroying." Ray Winstone singled out his time on the MCU feature in a new interview with Radio Times. In particular, the Dreykov actor pointed toward executive notes and the reshooting process as the biggest negatives. Winstone alluded to being really happy with his performance in Black Widow. But, when the reshoot process began, he felt like there was executive meddling going on. The star even mentioned that he wanted them to recast his character at one point. Now, that didn't happen because he had signed a contract. But, it's clear that Winstone was not a happy camper at that point.

"It was fine until you have to do the reshoots," the star explained. "Then you find out that a few producers have come down, and your performance is too much, it's too strong… That's the way Marvel works. It can be soul-destroying because you feel like you're doing great work."

"I actually said, 'You ought to recast it because that was it for me,'" Winstone revealed. "And you end up doing it again because you're contracted to do it. Otherwise you end up in court. It's like being kicked in the balls."

Black Widow's Reception

Funnily enough, Black Widow is one of the Marvel's best received post-Endgame movies. On Rotten Tomatoes, it is certified fresh with a 79% from critics and a very cheery 91% from audiences. However, writer Eric Pearson told ComicBook.com's Phase Zero podcast that he had received hate mail for things like the Taskmaster twist in the film.

"I got one. I made the mistake of looking in direct message requests and someone said, 'I don't mean to be out of line, but Taskmaster was the biggest betrayal of my life.' I got mad for a second and then I was like, 'Well, you've had a pretty good life then,'" he told us. If that's the worst thing that's ever happened to you, then you should be psyched because someone in a movie wasn't who you wanted them to be."

"Taskmaster was going to be involved and there was versions before I came that was Tony Masters," Pearson added. "I kept thinking, I was like, 'Can this guy somehow not just be a goon?' Because Dreykov in the Red Room is the thing that's tied into Natasha personally in her past of giant, nefarious, that as we learned, the spy station, that is circling the globe in the atmosphere. Why is there this guy? Why would this guy be an arm of them? That's what I kept trying to be... Trust me, I looked very, very far for how do we get this Tony Masters guy to believably be an agent of the Red Room? And then just leaned more towards other things were making sense, other parts of the puzzle were adding up."

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