Halle Berry thanks Matthew Vaughn for his X-Men 3 last stand against "shady shit"

The farther removed we get from that initial batch of X-Men movies, the uglier they seem to get. No matter how much Deadpool would like to paper over the past by getting Wolverine in his yellow spandex again, the allegations against Bryan Singer, apparent studio disinterest, and inconsistent quality have curdled the series’ reputation. Adding fuel to the fire, last year, Matthew Vaughn admitted that he quit his directing job on X-Men: The Last Stand due to the existence of a phony script meant to trick star Halle Berry into signing on. Berry also recently found out about the script.

Berry, who appears in a diminished and thankless role in the second X-Men sequel, thanked Vaughn on Instagram for calling out the studio’s “shady s—.” The Oscar-winner shared a video from the Pop Culture Brain newsletter of Vaughn speaking to a crowd at New York Comic-Con 2023, explaining why he left the project in 2005.

“I went into one of the executives’ offices, and I saw an X3 script, and I immediately knew it was a lot fatter,” Vaughn explains in the video. “I was like, ‘What the hell is this draft?’ He went, ‘Don’t worry about it,’ and I’m like, ‘No, no. I’m the director. I’m worrying about this draft.’ He wouldn’t tell me, so I grabbed it literally—it was like a crazy moment—but I grabbed it and opened the first page, and it said, ‘Africa. Storm. Kids dying of no water. She creates a thunderstorm and saves all these children.’ Alright. That’s a pretty cool idea. ‘What is this?'”

The executive told Vaugh that it was “the Halle Berry script.” At the time, 20th Century Fox attempted to get Berry to sign on to the movie by writing a fake script she would actually like to perform. Once she did, Vaugn was told that “we’ll throw it in the bin,” which the English call a trash receptacle. “I was like, ‘Wow. Wow, you’re going to do that to an Oscar-winning actress who plays Storm?’ I’m out of here, so I quit at that point because I thought I’m mincemeat.”

Berry praised Vaughn for sharing the story, writing, “Ya just never know the shady shit going on behind ya back! Thank you Matthew Vaughn for bringing the dark to light.”

Previously, the studio claimed he left the project because he didn’t want to uproot his wife, Claudia Schiffer, and their two children during production. Vaughn would go on to direct X-Men: First Class and write Days Of Future Past. He was under the impression he was directing that sequel too, but “Hollywood forgot to tell me after I wrote the damn thing that legally Bryan [Singer] got to direct it first.” That was the last straw for Vaughn, who stopped “mucking around” Hollywood and went and made The Kingsman. For her part, Berry returned to play Storm in Days Of Future Past and even popped up in the Kingsman sequel, The Golden Circle.

Berry also said she’d return to her other infamous superhero role, Catwoman, but only under the condition that she direct. Maybe she’d also like a crack at helming another tale from Charles Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, and in that one, Storm can finally save some kids.