Patrick Stewart says Doctor Strange cameo was "frustrating and disappointing" to film
Stewart was talking about the odd, isolated way his last appearance as Professor Charles Xavier was shot
With the benefit of hindsight, it feels like 2022's Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness was at least a mild turning point for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The film did great at the box office (especially by the standards of the franchise’s output over the last few years) and checked plenty of boxes—big name director in Sam Raimi, follow-up to the massively successful WandaVision, building on a well-liked original movie. And yet there was a sense of exhaustion that hung over the whole thing. Nowhere more than in the movie’s big, flashy cameo sequence that makes up a big chunk of its middle act, with Benedict Cumberbatch’s Strange confronted by a number of tantalizing Marvel What If…?s—including the first appearance of Patrick Stewart as Professor Charles Xavier in the MCU. In the role (his first time as Xavier since the character died in the future-set Logan), Stewart shows up in his wheelchair, does a bit of pontificating—and then abruptly dies.
Folks who appeared in the film have spoken before about what a weird experience it was, not least of which because Strange 2 was shot in 2020, in the heart of the COVID-19 lockdowns. (Production was actually shut down at least once due to U.K. restrictions on filming.) Now Stewart has added his own account to the tale, telling Happy Sad Confused’s Josh Horowitz that the process of filming the movie was both “frustrating and disappointing.”
Stewart was addressing Horowitz’s questions about the way Strange 2's big cameos were filmed, with each actor—Stewart, John Krasinski, Hayley Atwell, Anson Mount, and Lashana Lynch—being filmed entirely in isolation from each other, acting and giving their speeches to empty air. It’s not clear how much of this was due to security concerns over the high-profile cameos, vs. COVID restrictions, but it’s clear Stewart didn’t love the process—to the point that he acknowledges it’s not impossible he might bring Xavier back for at least one more time for the X-Men-adjacent Deadpool movies. At 83, the actor continues to work regularly, most recently appearing in the finale season of Star Trek: Picard on Paramount+. (He wants a new Star Trek movie, too, by the way.)