After Sunday’s screening of the hit movie, “Logan,” the Lucas Theatre remained packed as audience members waited for the film’s star and Legends of Cinema Award honoree Sir Patrick Stewart to grace the stage. Stewart took his seat for a question-and-answer session to a standing -practically leaping – ovation and thunderous applause.
After joking about his character’s Taco Bell rant in “Logan,” Stewart became serious, saying that, in a market perhaps oversaturated with super hero films, this is one like no other. “[Before filming] a hint had reached me from somewhere that this was not going to be a typical X-Men movie, and that the only existing X-Men would be Logan and Charles,” he said. “There was a draft of the script where it was explained and they cut it, and instead there are now very veiled references to something having happened.”
Stewart said he preferred the more mysterious final version and the challenges it presented in developing his character. He did, however, mention that another movie – “I can tell you it will not include myself nor, I’m sure, Hugh [Jackman],” he said – is in the works, that will further explain the latent references in “Logan.”
Stewart talked at length about his friendship with Hugh Jackman – referring to him at one point as “a delectable human being” – and how emotional it was for the two to say goodbye to roles they had played for 17 years. In fact, Stewart said the first time he really watched “Logan” was at a screening at the Berlin Film Festival, and he struggled to conceal his emotions, until he looked over at Jackman and caught him crying as well. “I thought ‘Lordy, if Hugh Jackman can cry at the movie ‘Logan,’ then I certainly can!’ and I let it out too,” Stewart said, laughing. “And Hugh reached over and took my hand and squeezed it tightly. So the end of the film went up at the Berlin Film Festival and Patrick Stewart and Hugh Jackman were holding hands. Both of us weeping.”
“I could not imagine there being a more appropriate farewell to the franchise for me,” Stewart said, “And somehow the fact that Hugh had said goodbye too seemed really appropriate.” He went on to express his confidence in the fact that the future of the franchise now rests on the shoulders of young Dafne Keen, who portrayed Laura in “Logan.”
Since seeing her audition tape in director James Mangold’s office – in which she performed her sides as written, as well as improvised – Stewart said he only became more impressed with Keen as both an actress and a person.
“The three of us were locked up in that darn truck for so long! For days and days and days in an unusually hot June in Louisiana, and we had such a marvelous time; she was such great company,” Stewart said. “Hugh and I both became so tremendously fond of Daphne, of her intelligence and her good humor and her downright ordinariness, which was just so nice.”
Of course, there is much that Stewart will take away from his 17 years playing Charles Xavier, but much from “Logan” in particular, he said. “The thing is, when the work is a certain quality, with the script and the direction and your on-camera colleagues, there is no alternative…it does affect one.”
Finally, when asked about the different types of fans from his dominant roles – Jean-Luc Picard in “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” Charles Xavier in “X-Men” and his 27 years with the Royal Shakespeare Company in London – Stewart said he is always pleased to hear how his performances have helped or moved fans.
“Because, you know, the thing about art,” he said, “is that it has the power to change lives. And that must never be forgotten. Our primary motivation has to be to entertain, first and foremost, because if you don’t entertain it’s a waste of time, and, after that, it is to give people insight into other lives and other places and other situations that perhaps they have never really considered before. And in that way you can have an impact on the world.”
Written by Shelby Loebker.
Check out our video to see Sir Patrick Stewart on the red carpet.
