This story contains spoilers from .
I know you’re here to read about Dafne Keen, the nineteen-year-old actress who appears in a little film called . You want to know what it was like for her to reunite with Hugh Jackman nearly a decade after they filmed Logan together. Whether her character (X-23, aka Laura, aka a Wolverine clone) has a place in the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe. Those. Cameos. We’ll get there! I promise.
But you really need to watch her audition for Logan. It’s right here. You’ll see the pint-sized Keen downright rattle Jackman. Eyes wide, screaming in Spanish, she squares her shoulders toward the Aussie—who legitimately has to pause mid-audition. His face says it all: How is she this damn good?! I want you to see it, because it makes her time with Jackman in Deadpool & Wolverine feel that much sweeter. The two actors have lived nearly ten years of life since, but they still have that unshakable chemistry.
“Oh my God,” Keen says over Zoom when I bring up the video. It’s just a day after she saw Deadpool & Wolverine for the first time, at the world premiere, and she’s still processing it all. She seems almost embarrassed—in a family-home-video kind of way—at the thought of her younger self battling Jackman. “Watching [Deadpool & Wolverine] yesterday, it was very lovely to see Laura and Logan onscreen together and realize how they still hold up.”
Keen, if you had any doubt, is downright thrilled that Marvel and Deadpool & Wolverine director Shawn Levy invited her to the party. Through some multiversal antics, this particular superhero joint sees Ryan Reynolds’s wisecracking assassin join the MCU. Along the way, Deadpool crosses paths with Wolverine, Laura, and quite a few more old friends—played by the likes of Channing Tatum (!), Jennifer Garner (!!), and Wesley Snipes (!!!).
So yeah, it most definitely is a party. After months of junketing for Disney+’s newest Star Wars series, The Acolyte, Keen is ready to talk about everything Deadpool and Wolverine, plus her future in the MCU. (And we mean all of it.)
Outfit by Dior; jewelry by Cartier.
ESQUIRE: How was the premiere?
DAFNE KEEN: I had so much fun. I had a lovely time. I saw everyone. I hung out with Hugh the most. Hugh’s family was there. We got to chat and catch up.
Logan was such a big part of your life—and it was your breakout role. What was it like to reconnect with Hugh Jackman nearly a decade later?
Hugh was my first role model. He was the first grown-up that I really looked up to. As a child, there’s a lot of things you mystify. And I thought I’d done that with Hugh. Then I got back on set with him, and I realized that he’s just as iconic as I’d made him in my head. He’s just such a sweet, caring, kind person. And he’s also just so incredibly talented. It was really fun to do scenes again with him—and to explore that really beautiful bond that we built eight years ago.
You know, I was about to make this interview entirely about Channing Tatum’s accent.
It was my favorite thing ever. I mean, I died. Throughout all of our scenes together, I had to ask him not to do his lines. Because he was so funny that I had to be like, “Channing, you need to shut the f*ck up!” Because I can’t stop laughing.
That was fully 21 Jump Street Channing Tatum.
That accent is gonna be the next [imitates Tatum] “My name is Jeff!” viral moment. I’m calling it right now.
In Deadpool & Wolverine, Keen reprises a role she played at just eleven years old.
Before we get to the cameo, do you feel like Deadpool & Wolverine honors what you and Hugh did in Logan?
It definitely does. Ryan and Shawn were so respectful of what we’d made that they really kept it at the forefront of their minds, and you can really see it in how they made the film. The fact that they even included me was such a lovely detail from them—that they’d even give me the time of day.
There’s this sense of Laura and Logan being the only people that can save each other. They’re kindred spirits. They have this beautiful, unspoken bond. I keep saying this—it was so lovely to revisit that and get to play with that again.
It’s a through-line in Marvel’s multiverse stories so far—that if you’re meant to find someone, you’ll find them.
Yeah. It’s so lovely watching the film and seeing how different and how vital to Wolverine it is to have a Deadpool in their life, someone to take care of and how fulfilling that is. Also, how lovely it is for Laura to give back after years of thinking she lost him—to get the opportunity back to repay him.
That’s a funny way to put it—a lot of us do have a Deadpool in our lives.
If you don’t have a Deadpool in your life, you’ve got it wrong. You need a slightly chaotic, yappy friend. He’s full of heart. Like, we all need that.
In ten years, what’s the Deadpool & Wolverine story you’ll tell at the bar?
They cut a little piece out of that scene with me and Hugh. Ryan would come in and he was, like, cooking, making s’mores, and his Deadpool glove would catch fire. Ryan almost burned his hand, and he was so chill about it. I was like, “Ryan, if my hand had caught on fire, I would burn!”
Wait, so Ryan made an actual s’more and burned it?
Yeah. It was quite funny.
In the years since Keen’s breakout in Logan, she’s brought her talents to TV series like His Dark Materials and The Acolyte.
That’s very Deadpool of Ryan.
I always forget the stories, and I write them down in a little journal. Oh my God. Wait. This is a terrifying story, by the way.
Oh no.
The first time you see Laura, you see her boots. That’s not what was happening in the film originally. At first, I got in a car with Hugh and Ryan and drove. But no one asked me if I could drive. And it was my first day on set.
[When I first arrived on set] I went to this forest in the middle of nowhere in the UK. I spent around seven hours in a tent. And they didn’t tell me what I was doing. It’s Deadpool—I’ll be a tree if you want me to be. Then this stuntman comes up to me. They’re like, “It’s a minivan. It’s fairly easy to drive. Hugh and Ryan are just going to be in the back of the car.” And I’m like, “I’m sorry, what? What do you mean fairly easy to drive?!?”
I had a very embarrassing conversation where I was like, “Guys, I don’t drive. I’m not about to get Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds in the car and take on billions of dollars of liability.” If you live in London, you don’t have to drive. Like, I haven’t even learned how to drive. I learned how to drive for Logan when I was eleven—and I’ve forgotten how to drive since. They were like, “Okay, scrapping that idea!” And then I got driven around by Jen Garner, which was cute. She’s the sickest person ever.
I was just going to ask you what it was like to exist in that room with Channing Tatum, Jennifer Garner, and Wesley Snipes.
[Snipes] doesn’t even know he’s funny. He would be completely silent and then he’d drop [something] suddenly halfway through the day. We’d be in the car. At one point, it was like Ryan, me, Channing, and then him in the back. We’d all be yapping. We’re all yappers. And he’d been completely silent. And at one moment, he put his head through the seats and told us an insane Hollywood story. And then he went back and he didn’t speak again. And we were like, “You can’t just drop this bomb and then be [silent]!”
It was such a vibe. They all knew each other. Channing and I had a rock, paper, scissors game on set every day. I killed him every time. He did not beat me a single time. It was really fun. I honestly couldn’t believe it. We had a little read-through of our stuff in Ryan’s trailer—and I remember just sitting there and being like, I can’t believe that these are my peers. There is no way I am on these people’s level. I’m just chilling in Ryan Reynolds’s trailer, reading the script with Jennifer Garner, Wesley Snipes, Channing Tatum, Hugh Jackman, and Shawn Levy. This is so casual. It was the most insane moment of my life.
“If you don’t have a Deadpool in your life, you’ve got it wrong,” Keen says. “You need a slightly chaotic, yappy friend. He’s full of heart. Like, we all need that.”
You’re right—it’s crazy that they all knew each other already.
I sat next to Hugh and I was like, “Please be my protector! I don’t know anyone.” They’re all really good mates. They’d all known each other for years and years. It was really seeing how excited everyone was to come back. And especially in Channing’s case, how excited he was to do it. And he was so ready for it. Like, he held that accent. He was doing card tricks. It’s just so impressive.
Where do you want to see Laura go from here? I imagine she’s lived so much life between Logan and Deadpool & Wolverine that could be explored in a project focused on her.
I would love to. And there’s so many incredible comics about her that would be amazing [to adapt]. Honestly, it would be such a dream for me to do that. I would kill to do that. She’s such an interesting character—and I don’t think I could ever get bored of playing her. So even if it’s just in the capacity of “Come play her for five minutes!” I’d be down.
Photographs by Ritchie Jo Espenilla
Clothing by Dior
Jewelry by Cartier
Hair by Nai’vasha
Makeup by Sil Bruinsma
Styling by Cher Coulter
Outfit by Dior
Jewelry by Cartier
Deadpool & Wolverine is in theaters now
