How Fox Got Stan Lee On The Gifted

Stan "The Man" Lee has been quite busy this year, making plenty of con appearances and filming a number of his MCU cameos. With all this in mind, it should be no surprise that it took some effort to have him appear in the X-Men spinoff show The Gifted. Matt Nix, the showrunner for the spinoff, recently told CinemaBlend how they managed to get Lee to cameo.

Nix mentioned how lucky they were that Stan happened to be in Texas since they were filming for the show there. Bryan Singer had worked with Lee in various X-Men films beforehand, so it was never a question of "if" he'll cameo but "how" he'll do it. Another problem was getting him to appear in the DoubleWide Bar in Dallas, where they planned his brief cameo.

Here is how Nix did it:

"We moved heaven and earth to get him in there. The morning we got him, one of our co-executive producers texted me in the morning and told me Stan Lee was in town for a comic book convention. We went to the convention to get him on the show, and they told us, ‘He flies out at four. If you can shoot him in two hours, then you can have Stan Lee in the show.' We didn't have that location. We didn't have anything. We were just like, ‘Okay, it's a bar? Do anything you can. We have to get the bar. We have to get the actor out of bed and bring him down here to put the costume on. We have to shoot the scene in 20 minutes!' We went down there, we shot the scene, Stan Lee was like, ‘Thanks very much!' Then he rode off to get on a plane. That's the kind of thing where I think people sometimes underestimate the degree to which we who make the show are just another group of fanboys trying to make something happen by the skin of our teeth."

Lee's cameo was quite short, but eagle-eyed fans were able to spot it immediately. Frankly, it's just good seeing the Marvel icon appear in the shows he helped create. Thankfully, we still have a number of MCU films where he will cameo in since he is filming them in advance.

The Gifted debuted to critical acclaim upon release. It's the second X-Men spinoff after Legion, which was also received positively.

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