Morbius opened earlier this month to mostly negative reviews, though its Rotten Tomatoes "Audience Score" (71% compared to the 16% "Tomatometer" score) suggests there were plenty of fans who did enjoy the Living Vampire's big screen debut. Whether you loved or hated it, it's clear that the movie was put through the wringer during post-production and that a lot of changes were made.
Talking to us about his role in Unplugging (you can watch the full interview below), Al Madrigal spoke out in defence of Morbius, but acknowledged that most of his work was left on the cutting room floor. The actor and comedian played FBI Agent Alberto Rodriguez in the movie, and was the partner of Tyrese Gibson's Agent Simon Stroud. However, both characters were left without much to do.
Unfortunately for Madrigal, that meant many of his best lines were absent from the Marvel movie.
"First of all, Morbius: not as bad as everybody is making it out to be. Sure, it had problems and they diced it up quite a bit. I had some hilarious lines that were cut out of that movie," Madrigal recalled. "I was very funny [Laughs]. In London, when you shoot they do a halfway party exactly midway through the film and there’s a big blowout. Editors came up to me. A gaggle of them came up and said, ‘Oh my God, we see everything you’re doing. All the subtle stuff. All of the jokes.’ I got to improvise through that freely. If they’d left in just 50% more of my stuff... [Laughs]."
"I got butchered in that thing," the actor admitted. "I think that’s what they did. They just really…because of COVID, they just had so much time to mess with it. They really messed with it."
While Madrigal did the best with what he was given to work with in the final cut of Morbius, there's a good reason he's considered one of the funniest comedians working today and, sadly, we didn't get to see too much of that. On the plus side, he has a very memorable part in Unplugging, and you can watch the trailer below. We'll share the full written interview with you about that project soon.
Unplugging arrived in theaters on April 22 and is available on Digital and On Demand on April 29.