Ray Winstone played the villainous Red Room overseer in Black Widow. While he wasn't the most memorable baddie we've ever seen in the MCU, the actor had some decent material to sink his teeth into and appeared in some hard-hitting scenes alongside Scarlett Johansson.
However, the actor really didn't enjoy his role in the 2021 blockbuster.
Talking to Radio Times, Winstone said shooting Black Widow "was fine until you have to do the reshoots." He added, "Then you find out that a few producers have come down, and your performance is too much, it’s too strong. That’s the way Marvel works."
"It can be soul-destroying because you feel like you’re doing great work," the British actor continued. "I actually said, 'You ought to recast it because that was it for me.' And you end up doing it again because you’re contracted to do it. Otherwise you end up in court. It’s like being kicked in the balls."
As it was, Winstone chewed scenery as Dreykov, so if he initially went even more over-the-top as the Russian baddie, that might explain why Marvel Studios wanted him to dial it back a little.
In a separate interview with The Guardian, Winstone admitted that there have been projects he's taken on simply because they pay the bills. Presumably, Black Widow was one of them!
"You go have fun for six weeks, see how it turns out," he says. "If it turns out great, it’s a plus. If it don’t, it don’t. But you’ve had a great six weeks. You do do films you don’t want to do. But you’ve got to do them because you haven’t worked in a little while and you’ve got to pay the rent."
Last year, Red Guardian actor David Harbour confirmed Black Widow's entire third act was reshot. "I think they did want the opportunity to change some stuff," he recalls. "The interesting thing about Marvel that’s so great about them is they do rework stuff. Even big productions."
"Like 'Black Widow,' the entire third act was reworked as we were shooting, which is incredible. And so, they just want that freedom."
Black Widow is now streaming on Disney+.
In Marvel Studios' action-packed spy thriller 'Black Widow,' Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow confronts the darker parts of her ledger when a dangerous conspiracy with ties to her past arises. Pursued by a force that will stop at nothing to bring her down, Natasha must deal with her history as a spy and the broken relationships left in her wake long before she became an Avenger.