How “Deadpool & Wolverine” stars prepared for their big A-list cameo-filled action scene (exclusive)

Two of the surprise cameos chat with EW about assembling their own team of heroes.

Warning: This article contains spoilers from Deadpool & Wolverine.

Dafne Keen remembers preparing for her big ensemble action sequence for Deadpool & Wolverine, in which a small squadron of elite heroes lay siege to the fortress of Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin). She just didn't initially know who she was prepping to perform all this with beyond the two lead stars, Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman.

"Shawn called me," Keen, who returned as X-23/Laura from 2017's Logan, tells Entertainment Weekly of director, writer, and producer Shawn Levy. "He was like, 'You're gonna be doing your scenes with some huge names.' I was like, 'Who?' And he was like, 'I can't tell you.'" Even on the call sheets, the guest actors' names were hidden under aliases to keep them a secret beyond the need-to-know folks. "Finally, like a week before, they were like, 'It's Jennifer, it's Channing, it's Wesley,'" Keen recalls.

Keen's Laura teams up with Jennifer Garner's Elektra from 2003's Daredevil and her 2005 solo outing; Channing Tatum as Gambit, thereby resurrecting the now-canceled Tatum-led Gambit movie from years ago; and Wesley Snipes as Blade from the original vampire hunter trilogy that began with the 1998 namesake entry. Keen, Snipes, and Corrin unpack their big action set piece with EW out of Comic-Con.

Related: Wesley Snipes didn't think Blade return was possible until Ryan Reynolds called: 'If you're in, we're in' (exclusive)

"They are all there very much as the film suggests because they deserve an ending, they deserve to be seen, they deserve a storyline," Corrin says of the surprise guests in the movie. "It was so fun to bring those characters to life again."

Keen remembers stunt training profusely — "like the psycho that I am," she says — when the teen starlet met Garner. "I was doing my little claw drills, and Jennifer walked it," she says. "Jennifer was all stressed out. She was like, 'Oh my god! I haven't done this in 20 [years],' and she literally starts..." The 19-year-old pauses to mimic Elektra's sai dagger hand twirls. "Insane!" she continues. "I was like, 'You're fine! You're actually so fine! I'm actually very intimidated right now.'"

Snipes feared he wouldn't be "Blade ready" to return to the physical aspect of the character. "I don't walk around as Blade every day, you know what I mean?" he explains. "With a trench coat and shades and fangs in my mouth. We had to work out. We definitely had to get the body, and my biggest concern was being in condition enough to deal with whatever the action was. They didn't really tell me what the action was going to be, so I prepared for whatever that was going to come. Thankfully, I didn't have to do as much as I thought I would because the action movies are tough. They're not easy at all by any means. About a month into it, I got the body right... and then, with the help of a little customized foam well placed in certain areas, it was all good to go, baby. Let's ride!"

Related: Chris Evans opens up about Deadpool & Wolverine role and wearing that suit again (exclusive)

In terms of actually shooting the sequence in Europe, Snipes says, "Man, it was so cold out there. My nuts shriveled up to about that, brother. It was so very cold when we shot this. We started shooting before the strike, and that was in the summer. Then we had to come back, and it was winter. That was winter where we shot in Europe there. Very, very tough. Doing action scenes in subzero weather is not easy and not good for your health, that's for sure."

Based on fan art posted online, some seemed to presume Keen might get a comic book-accurate blue-and-yellow super suit reminiscent of Jackman's Wolverine. The actress says there weren't any conversations of that nature "when I came onto it." She does, however, get Laura's pink sunglasses, the very ones the character steals from the gas station in Logan. "I was like, 'I'm so grown up, I'm completely different,' and then I put the sunglasses on, and I was like, 'Oh my God, I look the exact same,'" Keen jokes, adding, "You're just so badass with little pink glasses."

Though Keen didn't wear the blue-and-yellow suit, she says there were discussions about the t-shirt she wore. One option had a unicorn on it as a reference to Deadpool, but they felt it was too on the nose, so they swapped it for sunglasses. "What I'm excited by, which not a lot of people have picked up on, is that her belt is an X-Men belt," Keen says. "She has a little X on her belt."

Related: Channing Tatum thanks Ryan Reynolds for including fan-favorite character in ‘masterpiece’ Deadpool & Wolverine

Corrin notes various X symbols are hidden throughout the costumes and sets of Deadpool & Wolverine, particularly their own outfit and lair. "On the buckle, there's an X," they mention of Cassandra's look. "Then also the corset has an X. And I think those are quite specifically chosen things." Guess it's time for another rewatch.

Deadpool & Wolverine is playing now in theaters.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.