Black Widow star compares working for Marvel to “being kicked in the balls”

Black Widow star Ray Winstone didn’t enjoy working in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, comparing the experience to “being kicked in the balls.”

Ray Winstone is best known for playing tough guys in flicks like Scum, Sexy Beast, and The Departed.

He’s also dabbled in big-budget blockbusters like King Arthur, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and Snow White and the Huntsman.

But he hadn’t appeared in a superhero movie until playing the villainous Dreykov in Black Widow. And a new interview suggests it wasn’t an enjoyable experience for the actor.

Black Widow star compares working for Marvel to “being kicked in the balls”

Marvel typically schedules days – and sometimes weeks – into shoots so that once principal photography is complete – and the edit maybe isn’t working – actors can be recalled to fix any issues. Which is where it went wrong for Ray Winstone.

“It was fine until you have to do the reshoots,” Winstone tells the Radio Times about his experience on Black Widow. “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.’ 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.”

Ray Winstone had happier experiences on Damsel and The Gentleman, both of which hit Netflix next week. Damsel is an action-adventure movie that stars Mille Bobby Brown and starts streaming on March 8. While The Gentleman is a series that spins-off from the Guy Ritchie movie of the same name. That arrives the day before – March 7 – and you can read our 4-star review of the show here.