Fred Savage is a television icon who first appeared as Kevin Arnold on The Wonder Years from 1988 to 1993. He has gone on to be a prolific actor appearing in multiple films and television shows. His latest project, Once Upon a Deadpool, has him comically recreating one of his famous childhood roles as an adult. He is kidnapped by the titular character to play The Grandson from the classic film The Princess Bride.
Screen Rant: First of all Fred, it’s great to see you wearing pants.
Screen Rant: It’s good seeing that. How are your legs feeling? Are your legs okay?
Fred Savage: Yes! Thank you so much. Last time was very uncomfortable.
Screen Rant: How does this come about? What do they tell you to get you on board for this? I’m sure it’s not a hard pitch, but how does this all come about? They say, you know, we want to do something with The Princess Bride, what are you thinking?
Fred Savage: They’re getting back. They’re getting back. You know, after all of those days in the bed they atrophy a little bit. But they’re back. Strong! Strong! Thank you. Thank you.
Screen Rant: Yeah! Absolutely. You obviously worked with Ryan on this. How much of the stuff you guys did is on the page and how much of that is improvised?
Fred Savage: Well, my initial reaction is that sounds like a terrible idea. Everyone’s going to see through that. That’s awful. Why would you do that? Don’t do that. And then Ryan doesn’t take no for an answer and then you end up on set, and then it turned out to be a really, really great experience, and a really fun thing, and you know, I guess your kids can see Deadpool, so I guess it’s all worth it, maybe? I don’t know.
Screen Rant: So it worked out either way.
Fred Savage: Well, they had a very clear idea of what they wanted for this. They had all of these things written down and they said if you say these things that we wrote down then we’ll let you go. So I did! And they did so, I mean, he’s a gentleman.
Screen Rant: Going back to the set that you guys had and kind of reliving that from your childhood, that Princess Bride set, what was that experience even like walking through?
Fred Savage: It worked out.
Screen Rant: It’s pretty accurate. I mean, it like the exact same thing.
Fred Savage: Uncomfortable!
Screen Rant: You’ve done work in front of the camera in recent years but you have a very prolific career as a director as well on television and the Russos also started off the same way with Arrested Development, going on and doing that stuff and now a big part of the Marvel Studios. Do you have any desire working in the sci-fi/ superhero genre directing any of those kinds of films?
Fred Savage: They did a really good job. I got to give tremendous credit to the production design team because they did an incredible job. People online, they have like split screens and they line them up. They did an amazing job. It was really impressive. But it was very surreal. Very surreal.
Screen Rant: Right up your alley.
Fred Savage: Oh, absolutely! My kids, I have a twelve year old, and ten year old, and a six year old and so every…
Screen Rant: What superhero would Fred Savage be eyeing to do if he were to get into this foray of the superhero films?
Fred Savage: Oh my god, every Marvel movie, every superhero movie we are just like first weekend, front row, so yeah. Obviously. I mean the things that they’re doing and the people they get to do them, both in front of and behind the camera, you are just working with people that are at the top, top of their game. Top of their field at everything. Yeah. It’d be amazing.
Screen Rant: I love that answer. Obviously, you’re a director so I kind of got the sense that when you’re kind of picking apart the Deadpool story there’s a lot of you actually speaking, that’s all Fred I feel like. Is that all you and how you felt about some of the story?
Fred Savage: Oh man, the thing that I’m personally loving are the comedic banter that Guardians of the Galaxy brought to everybody. Whether it’s Guardians or Deadpool, obviously, or Thor: Ragnarok. The sense of humor that’s coming through these is amazing so hopefully it would be something with a sense of humor.
Screen Rant: One of my favorite scenes in this iteration, Once Upon a Deadpool, is where you said you’ve always wanted to fight Matt Damon.
Fred Savage: (Laughs) There is a lot of me in there, for sure and I think it’s all apart of what the Deadpool team does so well, which is really look at themselves which they do with a total lack of preciousness. That’s a big part of my personality as well, so those kind of dovetail nicely.
Screen Rant: What are some other celebrities that we can put on that list of who Fred Savage would always like to fight?
Fred Savage: Yeah! Sure! Sure!
Screen Rant: Just Matt Damon.
Fred Savage: Well, I’m a non violent man, as you may know. So there are very few people as someone both non violent and married that I would add to that list. So it’d really just be Matt Damon.
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Fred Savage: Just Matt Damon and he’s on that list alone. He’s on a lot of list alone and this is one that he just stands on top of with no one else with him.
