Ryan Reynolds explains what it was like to shoot a nude fight scene in 'Deadpool'
But to drive home just how adult the material is, the film also includes a nude fight scene between Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) and his nemesis Ajax (Ed Skrein).
In a recent interview with Buzzfeed, Reynolds went into some detail about the experience of shooting the sequence.
"There's a lot of me there," Reynolds said. "There's nothing else you can do except to sorta grin, bear it, and go, 'All right guys, we're all going to get to really know each other today…' It was ugly by necessity."
I guess necessary in the sense that the scene follows the experiment that makes Deadpool into a mutant, so showing him nude in the fight yet apparently unharmed from it gives you a good indication that he can no longer feel pain and he can easily heal. (And for the record: There is no gratuitous full-frontal shot - the scene is tastefully done.)
Reynolds also dropped some movie knowledge, saying that for inspiration he went back and watched Viggo Mortensen in "Eastern Promises," in which the "Lord of the Rings" actor has a nude fight scene in a sauna. (Check it out, but just a head's up, it's NSFW.)
"I always thought there's nothing more frightening than trying to fight a nude man in a Russian sauna," Reynolds said.
"Deadpool" opens in theaters on Friday.